Merry Christmas

Good morning/afternoon/evening,

I wanted to send some sort of
holiday greeting to friends and family, but it is difficult in today's
world to know exactly what to say without offending someone. So I met
with my lawyer yesterday, and on advice I wish to say the following :

Please accept, with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes
for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress ,
non addictive, gender neutral celebration of the summer solstice
holiday practiced with the most enjoyable traditions of religious
persuasion or secular practices of your choice with respect for the
religious / secular persuasions and / or traditions of others, or
their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all .

I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and
medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally
accepted calendar year 2012, but not without due respect for the
calendar of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society
have helped make our country great ( not to imply that the USA is
necessarily greater than any other country ) and without regard to the
race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual
preference of the wishee .

By accepting this greeting, please be advised that you are accepting
these terms : This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal.
It is freely transferable on the proviso that there is no alteration
to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to
actually implement any of the wishes for her / him or others and is
void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion
of the wisher. The wish is warranted to perform as expected within the
usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until
the issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher .

Best Regards ( without prejudice )
Name withheld ( Privacy Act )

What did I miss?

Back from my annual hunting trip. This year, we went rifle hunting in the Badlands and then bowhunting in the black hills. I didn't get a deer in either place. On the rifle hunt, I passed up on a mule deer and a whitetail, each with half their antlers broke off. Generally, you want a nice buck when you have to pack it out in that kind of country. We were there at the end of the season in a high pressure area so we were not seeing a lot of deer. The bowhunt was fun but did not connect this year.

A couple of other people got a deer on the trip, and a lot of pinochle was played. We did have a wild turkey supper, which is the highlight of the trip when we can get it.

Happy Halloween

So my dog died. I went out this morning to feed the dog, and noticed that she had not touched the table scraps I had given her yesterday. She was dead. She had just had puppies about 10 days ago, which may have been the cause. So now I have 7 orphaned puppies to bottle feed, and when they are full grown, nobody will want them anyway.

And I'm an idiot. Because the reason I know nobody will want them is because a year ago she had a batch. I gave all those puppies away after unsuccessfully trying to sell them. At least I didn't have to shoot them. And I didn't get her spayed because I didn't think she would live many more years. I was right, but if I had she'd probably still be here.

So I make Bob Barker look like a smart guy. I originally did not spay the dog thinking I could sell a batch of pups once in a while. I never sent in her papers anyway, and time passed. I went 7 years with no problems, and then two batches of pups in a year.

I will probably keep one of the pups to replace her. I will bury her out in the yard and plant a tree next to her in the spring.

She was the best dog I've ever had.

I drink 2%

Stolen from WRSA

Marketing

Marketing is the process of separating a person from their money, in exchange for a good or service that they may or may not need. The less you need it, the better the marketing required to get one to buy it.

As a consumer, one tends to recognize the marketing, and build some resistance to it. And some times, you recognize you've been defeated, and tip your hat.

Hornady has a winner here. I will have to have a couple boxes of this stuff.

Pardon our dust

I updated the look at little, and I seem to have lost the old comments. Oops.

Why we are doomed, August 2011 edition

Watch it yourself. If this doesn't piss you off you are one of them.

All the way to the top?

The most significant revelation of the week is that someone in the White House was made aware of the operation. Did the president or his chosen officials not only allow but encourage the illegal purchase and smuggling of arms into Mexico, a foolish and cynical attempt to further gun-control policies unobtainable through the legislative process? We now know that knowledge of the program was within a few steps of Obama.

But nobody cares. The law does not apply to liberals, the ends justify the means. Till someone gets caught.

Exporting Cats

Apparently, a mountain lion from South Dakota ended up in Connecticut.

I always thought that the mountain lions we see here are a result of there being too many mountain lions in the mountains. They end up in our more populated farmland because there isn't enough room in the hills. This guy should not have had to go all the way to Connecticut to find a home with relatively few mountain lions in it.

Maybe he was gay and was looking for a place with more liberal laws.

Hold yer water

Some video of the flooding. The corps of engineers may have screwed up, and mother nature sent the rains, and as a result we are releasing record amounts of water for the next couple of months. Everyone from Montana on down. We've flooded a couple nuke plants.

Oahe dam is about 9 inches from having water running over the emergency spillway, which would be all kinds of bad. They have the floodgates open instead. 6 tubes, 18 feet in diameter, nearly 160,000 cubic feet of water per second. 1.15 million gallons per second. In a day, enough water to cover 480 square miles a foot deep. The water would be exiting the tubes at about 100 feet per second, by my calculations. [Edit, actually 72 feet per second, as some of the water is going through the powerhouse.] At this rate, it would drain the entire lake, all 23,500,000 acre feet in 76 days, except the water is coming in upstream just as fast.

There is a lot of video on youtube. I would like to make the trip to see this myself.

Do your civic duty.

Take moment and let your Rep know how you feel about Gunrunner.

Then Join Gun Owners of America.

Tilting at windmills?

Animal Lovers, Idiots

I heard an anecdote on the local radio station today. A woman was killed by a mountain lion, the mountain lion was then killed. It was a female with cubs. There was more money sent in to support the orphaned lion cubs than was sent in to support the woman's orphaned children. I think that highlights some misplaced priorities.

This is a pet peeve of mine, when people do not recognize the position of animals in the world. They are property, not people. So ,that is what makes stories like this even more tragic. It is one thing risking your life for other people, it is quite another to risk three or four decades of your life for an animal with a life expectancy* of a year or two.

I do love animals, but it would be foolish to risk my life for one, even a beloved pet. (I did make that decision once. My dog fell through the ice 150 yards from shore. I let her get herself out. I was sure she wouldn't make it.)

* I was going to say life span, but that would not be correct. Given the reproduction rates of wild ducks, 4-6 ducklings per year, the mortality rate has to be pretty high or the population would explode.

On the velocity of an unladen.......

So I've been re-reading Surgical Speed Shooting over the last few days. The book is ok. The info in it isn't too bad but the book jumps around and is a little hard to follow. The book is about the isosceles shooting postition for shooting handguns. The author claims it is superior to the Weaver stance. I can't really say, I'm not proficient in either. But I was practicing the hand and arm positions and I found that the method really seems to align the pistol exactly where I am looking, the natural point of aim.

I stepped out my font door with my Ruger Mark II, and noticed a swallow flying towards me. I had seen several flying up under the eaves from inside the house earlier. They want to build a mud nest up there, and I don't really want them too. I assumed the stance as best as I knew it, and fired a shot as the bird turned and flew across my field of view about 15 feet away, leading it an inch or two. Imagine my surprise when it dropped. That is probably the best shot I have ever pulled off with a handgun, although it was mostly luck. I tried a shot at a bird on the ground 30 yards away and came very close. I am going to work on this some more, and maybe my handgun shooting will improve.

A quote,

For those in Indiana, and elsewhere.

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Lint

Mrs. Giraffe had her gall bladder removed. I'm not sure it was the right thing to do. We know a few people that have had it done, and there are usually side effects. Before surgery, she got violently sick for about a day once or twice a month. Hopefully any side effects are more bearable than that. Of course, it likely would have had to come out eventually. The surgeon said it was twisted up. Sometimes you do what the doctors tell you to do, whether they know what they are doing or not. The surgery went well, she is pretty sore, but so far so good.

I have not got my garden in yet. Still a very cold spring. Hoping to go bigger and badder with the garden this year. Also hoping to get some chickens. I'm thinking that gardening and having chickens and canning is a way to always have something to eat. Just in case the Schumer hits the fan. I bought 30 pounds of rice the other day. People looked at me funny. Hey, its cheap food, we like it, and the rice crop may not be so good this year due to flooding taking out 40% of the US production.

Still failing on my goal to have fruit trees. The deer got one last fall, 30 yards from the house. I stupidly thought they would leave it alone. They do not fear the house, they do not fear the dog, and I am unable to shoot enough of them to keep them away. The only solution is fence until the tree is large enough. I will be doing that from now on. The tree that they did not kill has shown no signs of budding so far this spring. I hope it didn't winter kill or something. I want apple, pear, plum, and cherry trees. I've probably planted a dozen trees over the years. I have one left alive. Maybe. There are a few others that I planted out away from the house that the deer killed. There are a few shoots coming up off them, so maybe something will happen. If nothing else, they can be pollinators.

Kinda neat, if you haven't seen it yet.

This has been all over the net, but it is an interesting diversion sometimes.


Webcam chat at Ustream

Aerials for Arielle

Arielle said she thought snow was pretty, so I wanted to post some pictures of the snow we got this year. Alas, I am lazy, and Mrs. Giraffe controls the camera, so I didn't get to it. Yet, all is not lost, I found some aerial photos from the Department of public safety that show a little bit of snow, as well as what it turns into in the spring, water.

In the county I live in, there is only one road open that runs in the east/west direction. I am lucky, I only have to go a few miles out of my way to get to work. A friend lives a mile from his farm, and has to drive 15 to get there. I am hopefully done pumping liquefied snow out of my basement.

Searching for Syracuse.

The following I left as a comment out there on the webs:

Bee hives are dangerous, so why don’t we stop kicking them.

First, there is no shortage of tin horn tyrants that haven’t attacked us, even if you exclude our own. We like to pretend to be the world’s cop, but we are broke, we don't have the will, and everyone hates the police. We don’t have the ability to referee every ball game in the world. If we don’t need to attack Kim Jung the Ill (and we must not need to, since we haven’t), we don’t need to be in Lybiastan. If we can’t figure out Iraqistan in ten years, throw in the towel.

Second, I don’t think trying to bring freedom by force of arms to a muslim nation is very well thought out. They are culturally incapable of it. If they are capable of it, let them die to bring it about.

The key point, besides the pointless killing, is that we are broke. Sooner or later, Uncle Sam’s checks are going to start bouncing, and we surely won’t be safer then, no matter how many despots we depose now. These wars may not be the chief cause of our brokeness, but they don’t help.

I don't know how best to prosecute this war on terror, but I don't think we are doing it right. I'll bet the Professor will rip me a new one.

Now look what you made me do.

Fine.

I wasn't going to do a post on Game. It seems you can't avoid stepping in it these days. I'm hearing the lamentations of the women and the cheering of the men.

Is there a socio-sexual hierarchy? It sure seems like there is. I don't reside at the top of it. It's easier to see from below. It seems pretty straight forward that women want to land as high a value man as they can, and men want to land as high a value woman as they can. Women are generally ranked on looks and personality.

Men are generally ranked by were they fit in the social strata. Women want the CEO, not the janitor. It is complicated, by the fact that women don't only look at status. They also look at wealth, and looks. Or at least all of these figure into a man's status in a woman's eyes. This is called hypergamy.

You might notice that none of the criteria are righteous in a Christian sense. It is not supposed to be this way.

Enter Game. Game is a man learning to fake a higher status to trick a woman into having a higher opinion of him. Usually the object of this is sex. It is blatant false advertising, on par with women wearing makeup to appear more beautiful than they really are.

So, naturally women are pissed.

In college, the bigger jerk a guy was, the more women he got. I never understood why, but the effect was real. Looking back, I am glad I was the nice guy. Less to feel guilty about now, and no diseases. Anyway, the reason a jerk gets women that is he is fooling her. The nice guy puts her on a pedestal and is shy. She doesn't need to respond to him. She can get him anytime she wants. He is signaling to her with his lack of confidence that she is a step up in the ranks for him. Therefore, he is a step down for her.

The jerk is sending the opposite signals. By acting like she doesn't matter, or just acting confident, he is telling her that he can get her, or a woman like her, any time he wants to. She believes that he is a higher status male, so now she thinks he's a catch. She may do foolish things trying to land him that she will regret later.

So nice guys finish last. You want the girl? Be an asshole.

So women. If you are angry about this, you can put a stop to it. Recognize what is going on, and stop responding to it. This is only going to work for a while anyway, till the whole social marketplace evolves and women start going for boys that cut themselves.

The good news for a Christian woman, is that if she has her eye on the ball, Game is irrelevant. Because she should be looking for a Godly man, and she should not be susceptible to Game. At least you can tell yourself you are game proof.

Look around the church, and see if you recognize a pattern. Are the most beautiful women evenly distributed among the nice guys and alpha males, or is there a pattern in the way people pair up? You don't often see the geek with the goddess. I think the pattern holds, though to a much lesser extent. I'll bet it varies a lot between churches.

As for game within marriage?

I am not sure game is completely useless. Sure it is wrong to be manipulative.

Yet, there are some things that are just good to know, and women don't come with an owners manual. Women don't always know what they want. Women don't always mean what they say, or say what they mean. She wants to feel like her husband can protect her, and may throw a tantrum just to see what he can handle. This is strange business for a man. Generally he thinks in straight lines and says what he means.

If there is anything positive in this, a man has more understanding as to why she is doing certain things, because she may not know herself, and she might not tell him if she did.

Enough with the game already.

Freedom of the press

What it actually looks like:

Deadeye

Mrs Giraffe is not fond of guns. She grew up in a house dominated by a gun fearing wussy, her mother. Her dad hunted a little, but he didn't pass it on to his daughters. He eventually quit, and his guns gather rust and dust somewhere. So Mrs. Giraffe didn't grow up as a shooter. I've been trying to get her to shoot a little, over the years. She had only fired a .22 until the other day.

Saturday, I decided she was going to have to shoot my .45 auto. There had been a large male Alaskan malamute around the place raising heck and abusing my new puppy. She called all the neighbors and nobody claimed him.

I told her to shoot him. She didn't want to. We don't have a dog catcher out in the country. I could have taken him to town but the dog cowered in fear every time I tried to handle him. I was afraid he would bite me. He usually left shortly after I got home.

The dog would be gone a couple days and then come back. One day after he had been a nuisance for over a week, the dog began grabbing the puppy and shaking it, and tossing it in the air. This was The Last Straw. She got the puppy into the house before he killed it. (the puppy is not housebroken, and I am allergic to cats and dogs, so he can't live inside.) She decided the dog must be killed. But she told me she didn't know how. I got rid of the it when I got home.

I had showed her how to operate my .45. She still remembered. But she had never shot it. She could have shot the dog if she needed to, but I think she was afraid, and she's never shot anything living. I threw a pop can out on the snowbank. She took aim and fired. I couldn't see any snow fly, I suspected she had missed by a mile. Then I noticed the hole through the can.

At least she can defend the house if she absolutely has to. I will try to make her more comfortable as time goes on.

Wherein the M4 is criticized.

I had thought that the new piston ar's that are so fashionable right now were somewhat of a gimmick. Yes, the principle of not pooping where one eats* does make sense. I also thought that the current platform was working pretty well, but apparently this is disputed by some. I don't particularly feel the need to upgrade, as I don't live in the Iraqi desert, and I ain't got the money anyway.

* This refers to the AR's gas impingement system which routes propellant gases and therefore residue back into the action as a means to operate it.

H/T Concerned American

Licentiousness

Brother Difster has attacked licensing:

The only reason for government based licenses is that governments like to have control and other people in various professions want to artificially limit competition.

I don't necessarily disagree with him that licenses are used to reduce competition. That is definitely a downside, and in some cases is intentional. That is not the reason for licensing. Licensing is used for professionals who require a certain amount of knowledge or skill to perform their profession.

I'll use land surveying as an example. On occasion I have heard of people who have set their own property corners. They will helpfully show you where they are, and how they went about putting them there, with their Stanley tape measure, no doubt. Obviously they don't know it is illegal to do this. We would listen politely and then ignore them. Even if they are in the correct place, they don't hold any legal validity. They must be set by a licensed Surveyor for that.

There are methods, and standards of care, and some legal knowledge that is required to properly perform a survey. Some expensive equipment, that the average guy doesn't have.

If a license wasn't required, joe shmoe could go out and set his car axles for corners, and they would be just as valid as anyone else's, despite their being 5 feet off from the correct location. The next door neighbor, not liking the lack of precision, could go out and set his own, leading to a dispute. That would be one benefit to licensing. Land Surveyors sometimes get it wrong, but not nearly as often, and respect for the license will prevent some disputes. There are correct procedures that are used for establishing lost corners that a licensed individual must know. There are standards for setting monuments, that display the surveyor's name and license number so the monument is identifiable as to what it is, and who put it there.

Now could a private firm certify land surveyors? I suppose. So you hire one endorsed by a private firm because you want it done correctly, and your neighbor hires a bum off the street and slips him and extra five to take an extra five feet. Who decides which one is right? More needless court action.

With regards to Engineering. Do you want to live in a building designed by a licensed engineer who met the requirements for obtaining a license, or do you want to live in the one designed by an idiot who bought the drafting software? Nobody would ever lie, overstate their qualifications or experience would they? Sure your family can sue him after you are dead. But they won't collect, he won't have any money, and you will still be dead.

How about the engineer who has been in practice for 40 years, has a stellar reputation, but isn't up on the latest information? We are required to have continuing education to keep our license. I will admit, the continuing education as it is right now can be a joke. The threat of having your license pulled is also an incentive to be careful, in cases where lives may not be at stake.

As far as private certification, yes it could work in theory. But then you have the opportunity for someone to fake the certification, or competing endorsements. One costs a lot of money and you have to prove you know your stuff, the other you can get out of a cracker jack box. Anybody can make up a website telling how they've been certifying the best doctors for decades. Worse, there is no way to stop malpractice, and in some cases, malpractice is in the client's best interest.

As for the government using licenses as control? The problem is not licensing, it is over-reaching government. Some occupations really don't need licensing.

Now the system of licensing is far from perfect. (I should know, I've got two of them.). Sometimes the barrier of entry is too high, and sometimes there is an old boy network in control of the process, as I am lead to believe about a state to my east. Lawyers have licenses, and look at what boon to the public that is. Most professions predate licensing.

However, sometimes barriers to entry are not just for limiting competition. They are sometimes used to keep the morons out. Public safety is a good reason for licensing, even if it is just a hairdresser spreading lice.

More government stupidity

When legislators get cute.

State lawmakers in South Dakota have introduced legislation that would require all residents aged 21 and over to purchase a firearm beginning in 2012.

This is nothing more than a stunt. Requiring someone to buy a gun is no more constitutional than requiring them to buy insurance.

Or is it? You see this is a state law, not a federal one. While the feds are prohibited from these over-reaching laws by the constitution, the states are not so long as they don't do anything otherwise prohibited. So the law may actually be legal.

Which is why the following quote actually makes the lawmaker look the fool:

"Do I or the other cosponsors believe that the State of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not. But at the same time, we do not believe the federal government can order every citizen to buy health insurance," Wick told the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

Anyway, I think it would be hilarious if it passed as is.

Elk

Res showed his elk pictures. Here is some my brother took this year. The elk are out in an area burned in the Jasper forest fire, the largest in Black Hills history. My aunt took some pictures of a couple of huge bulls, and the deer that we shot, but I am supposed to fix their computer in order to get them.

Probably irrelevant

Like Obama's citizenship, or lack thereof, the Leviathan will probably ignore this. It's unconstitutional anyway, so that fact that the amendment was never actually passed can't possibly mean anything to them.

What's a Snooki?

Apparently, in places that are not flyover country, or at least have cable, there is a television show called Jersey Shore. While not having actually seen it, I believe it follows the typical reality show formula, showing bad people at their worst, with this show excelling in this regard.

Then there's this gal Snooki from the show, who wrote a book, most likely in the manner Obama wrote his.

I have to say there are some funny parts, but I am talking about the Amazon reviews, not the book.

Happy New Year

2011 started with a bang. My father in law had open heart surgery, we just brought him home. My sister in law got married in the hospital so that he could attend.

So we made the papers and the local news, apparently it made good PR.

It finally occurred to me, dense as I am, that things could have been much much worse than they turned out. So I guess I can't complain about what a bad year it is, actually its pretty darn good.

I hope everyone else is doing OK.