sānshíbā nián

Yes, I've started to learn Madarin. It means three times ten plus eight year(s), and that's my age as of today.

going prone

Or: about the unnecessity of shooting standing

Just watched John Wayne's Stagecoach for the first time (about time, ain't it?).

In the final shootout he's facing three opponents he defeats by surprisingly going prone and thus assuming a much more steady position from which he could deliver more accurate shots while presenting a smaller target. Very cunning and tactical!

But I still wonder why the bad guys don't just shoot a horse to stop the coach...

eight years

Eight years ago I spent the night in front of my TV, watching CNN and other news channels. I had spent the day with fellow reservists. The news hit us on the way to a training and at first I thought, yeah, Cessna maybe, accident. Then I thought that someone had read too many Clancys. When I returned I had counted my ammo, 750 rounds, IIRC.

Eight years - already.

The first World War lasted from 28 July 1914 until 11 November 1918 - four years, three months, fourteen days.
The European part of WWII lasted from 1 September 1939 until 8 May 1945 - five years, eight months, seven days.
The Pacific part of WWII lasted from 7 July 1937 until 9 September 1945* - eight years, two months, 2 days.

But I somehow have the feeling that the War on Terror will dwarf the Thirty Years' War - at least.

*) The length of the Second Sino-Japanese War. There already was a war in Asia/the Pacific before Pearl Harbor.

Lunitidal Intervals, Mondtidenintervall

As mentioned in my last post, finding the correct lunitidal interval for the closest coastal city was a bit difficult. I'll spare you all the dead ends I found during searches.

In the end it was a case of RTFM - the lunitidal interval (German: Mondtidenintervall) for Hamburg can be found at the end of the manual. The site Riley pointed me to has a table with UTC differentials and lunitidal intervals, too.

the only replacement for a G-Shock

When I discovered a crack in the body of my trusty old DW-6600 there was only one solution: off to Casio's homepage a select a successor.


My eyes fell upon the G-9100. Nice, large digits for readability, with just the necessary functions and few gadgets. For me the necessary functions are:

• time (of course)
• alarm
• stopwatch
• countdown
• light

World time is a nice to have but how often do I travel past time zones or do I have to know the local time someplace else? Anyway, for the G-9100 the gadgets are:

• world time
• moon phase
• tide graph

Moon phase is interesting. When I go hiking or drive a long distance it would be nice to know whether I can expect a bright or a dark night. In the light of the last book I read it might also influence ammo choice. :-) Tide graph? Uh, now that I live up north and near the coast I thought that would be ok.

I had considered a Traser Classic Alarm Big Date Pro but then bethought myself of something more sensible. The Traser CABDP is a very nice watch, just as a Kimber Desert Warrior or Springfield TRP are very nice and sexy guns. But there's nothing they can do my Glock couldn't do, too. Actually, my Glock can do more (at least for me) for half the price. In the case of the two watches it's more like more functions for a quarter of the price.

Anyway, I'm happy with my new companion. Only those 'Lunitidal Intervals' caused me some worries. More about that in the next post.

it is the antis who are evil

One argument for stricter gun-laws or an all-out gun-ban is 'your guns are threatening me!' 'Yeah, you have a right to own guns but your exercising that right threathens my right to physical integrity!'

Some people feel a danger emanating from the guns of legal gun owners. They are afraid that those guns might be used to threathen or harm them. 'Feel' and 'might' are the main words here.

I, on the other hand, don't just feel that there might be a danger for myself from the antis - I know it for certain. While, if I could have it my way, there is a faint possibility that I could use my guns or that my guns could be used to infringe the rights of other people, it is 100% sure that my rights would be infringed, that my life would be changed, if those against guns had it their way.

Let's have a look at Germany's criminal statistics, issued by the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA):
For 2008 the BKA registered 6,994 cases in which guns were used to threathen people, in 4,371 cases they were fired*, 11,365 cases in total. I will not subtract the number of cases in which toy pistols were used to threaten people or in which guns were used to shoot road signs. The number of cases in which permit-requiring guns were used is definitely lower than 11,365. The BKA estimates that there are about 10,000,000 legally owned guns in Germany and about 20,000,000 illegally owned ones. About 5% of the permit-requiring guns used in gun-related crimes are legally owned. With an estimated minimum of 2,500,000 legal gun owners that means that there's less than a one in (2,500,000/(11,365x0.05)=4,400 annual chance that I might use my guns to threaten people or shoot them (the guns) in a crime.

On the other hand, every gun law, every ban affects me every year!

BTW, last year you had a one in 18,000 chance to really die in a traffic accident, not just being threatened by the way someone else drove or being in any kind of accident. We still have cars in Germany, and buying, registering, and keeping one is much easier that buying, registering, and keeping a legal gun.

*) I can't think of any other 'real' crimes with guns. Illegal carry is considered a crime but it's a victimless crime. That there can be a crime without a victim, without someone being affected or something being damaged is a strange concept for my engineer's mind. And who'd use a gun as a club?

Emm Aitch Eye

Last night, around 0230, I finished Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International (MHI).


[Expletive], that was a hell of a book! Now, just three weeks and two posts ago I claimed that Point of Impact was the best book I read in a long time. Well, MHI bet it. :-)
It's got everything - there's action, horror, fantasy, even romance, and especially GUNS, lots of them! And Correia knows what he's writing about. And it's gripping from the first page all the was through to the last. No lengthy introduction of characters and nitting of plots BEFORE the action starts. That happens WHILE the action starts. (Are you reading that, Mr Clancy?) Correia doesn't waste a page.

If you're into action, horror, fantasy, romance, or guns, this book's for you!

another dead Kennedy

Ted Kennedy, known among gun nuts as 'the man whose car has killed more people than my guns', has died.

Unlike other Kennedys before him, he died of a more natural cause, no guns or planes involved.

Point Of Impact

I finished Stephen Hunter's Point Of Impact last Friday, around 0130. Though it has ~200 pages more than The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress it just took me four days to absorb the book. It would've taken less hadn't my panda kept me from reading. ;-)

As the short time I needed for reading it implicates, it's a great book. Damn, it's the best book I read since...uh...for a long time. Better than the one Forsyth I read or most of the Clancys, on par with Without Remorse, but there's something about Stephen Hunter that Clancy's lacking. Authenticity, maybe? Lack of errors? The feeling that he's writing about something he actually knows about? It's a book by a gun owner about a gun owner for gun owners. Take sentences like these:

It was a Remington 700 bolt action, lovingly purchased by the Marine Marksmanship Team and presented to him as a retirement gift when he'd been invalided out of the Corps in 1975. It had a heavy varmint barrel which almost neutralized vibration when he fired, though Bob had since replaced the original barrel with a stainless steel one from Hart, which he'd then finished with Teflon so the whole piece had the appearance of old pewter. The barrel, action and even the screws were bedded in Devcon aluminum into a black fiberglass and Kevlar stock. The screws were torqued through aluminum pillars, tightened to sixty pounds. The rifle was purely ugly. It was a .308 Winchester, and one of Bob's own handloads now rested in the chamber.

or

Off to one side stood a reloading bench, with a single-stage Rock Chucker for his rifle reloads and a Dillon for his .45's, and stacked along the wall, neatly and fastidiously, were his many dies.

or

The smell of Shooter's Choice bore solvent hung in the air like a vapor. A single light illuminated the darkness, and if he wasn't shooting or sleeping he was reading Guns & Ammo or Shooting Times or The American Rifleman or Accuracy Shooting or The Shotgun News or Rifle.

or

He slipped a cocked and locked Series '70 Colt .45 out of a drawer...

It's the fictitious newspaper articles that make me think Hell, yeah!

The grudge does not make him special; only the .38 caliber rifle does.

Typo! was my first thought. But no, it's not a typo. Newspapers are that dumb. Just as...

Who needs a long-range assault rifle capable of shooting a man dead at over 400 yards? ... Congress should act immediately to ban telescopic-powered long-range multi-shot assault rifles.

...is what "journalists" would indeed write.

Then there are these subtle hints, like the name of a another famous sniper. Page 235:

"...Your anger at not becoming a big hero like--do I have the name right?--Carl Hathco--"
"Hitchcock. Carl Hitchcock."

Or the first name of the evil sniper, which I won't mention, it would be a spoiler. But those into guns and 2A will get it.

If you're into pro 2A books featuring action and guns, Hunter's Point Of Impact is a MUST for you! If you aren't into guns or against guns, don't bother, you wouldn't understand anyway. The book would be wasted on you...

you haven't read enough English books

Or so says the advice I got in the first reply to my last post.

Well, let's take a look...

Started / not yet read: 28
German books I've read: 16
English books I've read: 52
(Not shown are the ones lent or given away, almost all of which are English books)

I read thirteen of the German books before I seriously started reading English books. Which means that during the last 20 years English books outnumbered German ones better than ten to one. All of the technical documentation I read at work is in English (no one would translate a +1000 page NASTRAN handbook or online help to German) and I guess that half of my email at work and at home is in English. Oh, and my girlfriend is trilingual and sometimes we speak English.

No, I think I read enough English books and other text to be able to read and comprehend an English book sufficiently fast. But give a German from the coast a book written in a kind of German that's meant to resemble Bavarian dialect and grammar a see for results. A book written in a kind of English that's meant to resemble the English spoken by a Russian immigrant (none of the Russian immigrants I know speak like that) IS hard to read. Damn, it's difficult to listen to someone who speaks your language badly.

The commenter appears to be from the Czech Republic. Maybe dear Mannie's language somehow resembles Czech? I certainly have no problems reading German English...


PS: Note to authors! If you want your books to become bestsellers (especially international ones), make them easy to read!
I bet McNab has already made more money with his books than Ayn Rand. I don't think I'll buy another of Rand's books after starting Atlas Shrugged, giving up temporarily and lending it away.

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Hey Tam!
I finally finished the book.
Damn, you could have warned me! ;-) That English was horrible! I attribute much of the delay to the fact that the book is extremely diffcult to read - at least for a second-language speaker.

If you want to kill a certain person...

...don't use an indiscriminate weapon!

If you want to be sure WHO you hit and THAT you hit him, please use a gun or a knife, not a bomb.

Anyway, respect to the men of 20 July for daring to do the right thing.

in case nobody noticed

Panda mentioned investing in natural resources funds and reminded me of an article in an old book I got when I was a kid. It was issued by Bertelsmann, celebrating their 150th anniversary. For me it used to be kind of a Junior Woodchucks Guidebook. Anyway, on p. 143 there's a table featuring known reserves of resources and expected time spans until they'll run out. According to this table (assuming average growth) we should've run out of...

• natural gas - two years ago
• lead and copper - three years ago
• crude oil - four years ago
• zinc - six years ago
• tin - nine years ago
• mercury and silver - eleven years ago
• gold - fifteen years ago

Interesting, isn't it?
But relax, fellow shooters! Aluminum for cases and iron for bullets should last another seven and 69 years respectively. And coal for black powder another 87.

mail

Look, what the postman brought! A nice selection: there's military history, action thrillers, a travelogue, and good, classic music.

I had looked for original, German redactions of (1) and (2) but couldn't find them. I can't properly describe what I feel when I see that amazon carries translated, English redactions of those books but not original, German ones. (3) is a replacement for the book I gave away to a friend. I bought (4) because I like the movie (DVD will arrive with the next parcel). (5) and (6) are new book by one of my favourite authors. (7) and (8) will become a gift. I bought (9) after endlessly listening to excerpts on you tube*.

I know someone who'dve been happy about receicing the same parcel. Though she already has at least one of the books. Right, Tam? ;-)

*) watch out for a post featuring 'songs that give you goosebumps'

Compulsory Military Service

I used to be a strong supporter of the conscript army and during the last years had some heated discussions with Oleg about it. He had a few arguments against Compulsory Service of any kind, e.g. likening it to slavery, but the ONE argument that got my mind ticking was a simple yes-no question:

"Is a country which cannot find enough volunteers for its defense worth being defended at all?"

Oleg didn't even talk about possible consequences should the answer be yes or no...

PS: For me the answer was 'no'.

7/4

A happy Fourth of July to my American friends!