Happy New Year!

by Bryan

9 comments

1 Steve Bates { 01.01.14 at 12:25 am }

Thanks, Bryan! And when the projectiles fall, may you and yours all be standing somewhere else!

2 Badtux { 01.01.14 at 10:49 am }

The inability to tell time appears to be common amongst those who fling projectiles in the air…

Conversation from Facebook:

CPW:
Not sure if the locals are test firing their guns in anticipation of midnight or maybe they’re just clearing the fields next to the lake of wild hogs.
Like · · Share · 11 hours ago near Lewisville, TX ·

Art: Do Texans shoot in the air to celebrate, like they do in the Middle East?
10 hours ago

Eric: Art: Yes. And also just to shoot in the air. Texans like to shoot, a lot, and haven’t figured out that whole “gravity” thing yet. That’s one of the problems with Texas — it’s full of Texans .
10 hours ago ·

CPW: I didn’t hear a single gunshot last year. I guess everyone’s done hoarding ammo.
10 hours ago · Like · 1

Eric: The Nigerian didn’t come get their guns, so I guess they decided it was time to rotate their ammo.
10 hours ago · Like

CPW: The rest of the cowboys must be drunk because it was a few minutes after midnight before they began to stumble off their porches and fling lead into the sky.
10 hours ago

Ah yes, New Year’s in the South. Y’all wear your combat helmets, y’hear?

3 Bryan { 01.01.14 at 1:39 pm }

The casualty reports haven’t come in yet, but there are some every year, and not just in the rural areas. It’s not that it takes seconds to dump the shot out of a shotgun shell and make it a noisemaker, it’s that these people are too stupid to do it.

Fortunately we’ve had rain, so they aren’t likely to start too many fires this year, as has happened in the past.

4 Badtux { 01.01.14 at 6:56 pm }

One of the people whose passing I missed due to being out of town and off line for much of the time was Mikhail Kalashnikov, probably the best designer of guns of the latter half of the 20th century (John Browning is the undisputed king of the early half of the 20th century). Sorry, sort of off topic, but this discussion of people “celebrating” by firing lethal projectiles into the air sort of brought that to mind. He was 94 years old so his passing was not unexpected. In a way, the AK-47 was responsible for the personal computer though. Without the AK-47 in the hands of millions of Communist guerillas everywhere, capitalists in the post-WW2 period would have never been forced to allow a robust middle class to develop, and without a robust middle class, there would have never been a personal computer, just military, industrial, and commercial computers. The AK-47 forced capitalists’s hand and forced them to share some of their wealth with the middle class. And now that Communism has fallen and guerillas armed with AK-47’s are no longer forcing capitalists to share their wealth with a robust middle class, we are all the poorer for it. Mostly literally, given how fast the middle class has collapsed since 2000.

So yes, I would nominate Mikhail Kalashnikov as the greatest inventor of the 20th century. His invention changed the lives of billions of people, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst, but change nevertheless. A true “people’s gun” that was easy to knock off and manufacture in 3rd world conditions and was reliable as a brick in 3rd world world conditions was a game-changer in the end, even if it is nowhere near being the “best” in any other categories other than “cheap” and “reliable”.

– Badtux the Socioeconomic Penguin

5 Bryan { 01.01.14 at 9:09 pm }

I’ve seen AKs being made in what amounted to blacksmith shops in the ‘less developed’ areas of the world, using hand-tools. The barrels tended to be former axles that ended in scrap metal yards. The locals have been heat treating edged weapons for centuries, so they knew how to go from soft to hard.

Not terribly accurate, but the only people I’ve ever seen aiming in a hot zone are snipers. The majority ‘aim’ by seeing where the rounds impact.

Yes, Uncle Mikie [Дедя Миша]changed the way wars were fought.

6 ellroon { 01.02.14 at 12:54 am }

Strange to think the evil empire anti-god commies actually helped us become the best super de duper power in the world. Oh well. The neocons have been beating the bad guy drum for Iran for a while now, but it doesn’t seem to be working. They sure miss the Cold War.

Anyway, Happy New Year to you, Bryan, and your mom. And all your furry felines. May this year be less eventful than the last one.

7 Bryan { 01.02.14 at 5:27 pm }

What is really strange is how quickly the Soviet Union went from being a BFF to the ‘Evil Empire’. The US financed much of the military industrial complex of the Soviet Union during World War II, and then pivoted to claim it was the biggest threat to humanity ever created. We made friends with our enemies, and enemies of our allies. Amazing bit of social engineering if you look at it from the outside, and the main reason that the Soviets didn’t trust the West, and the Russians still don’t.

8 ellroon { 01.03.14 at 12:13 am }

Oddly… the Russians were right. Look at how we give weapons to any tinpot dictator who wants them, and then we declare war and bomb the shit out of them. You’d think the world would learn…

9 Bryan { 01.03.14 at 12:32 am }

For decades if you claimed your government was anti-communist you would be rolling in US cash and weapons in no time. The thugs we supported were using fascists of one type or another, but paying lip-service to stopping ‘the Red Menace’ was all that was required.

We will never have friends in the Middle East, because they don’t trust us any more than Soviets did. We don’t honor our contracts in the long term and everyone knows it.

The US doesn’t have the attention span to be a reliable ally for anyone.