Month: October 2023

Retrospective

Classic Beauty, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Sometime ago, a commenter asked:  “What happened to Nigella Lawson?  You used to be so sweet on her”  (or words of that nature).

Simple answer:  she lost a whole bunch of weight, and along with that, Nigella got all gaunt ‘n stuff.  (It’s all okay to lose weight;  but sometimes, something essential is lost along the way.)

I thought I’d illustrate the point with (what else?) a couple of pics.  Here’s Our Girl in years gone by:

And magnificently tousled:

Then she started to lose weight:

And had she stopped there, I think we can all agree that this would have been fine.  But she didn’t:

I mean the basics are still there, but…

And a couple more reminders of days gone by:

See what I mean?

I know;  she’s got older, too — but the gaunt, “skinnier” Nigella just doesn’t do it for me anymore.  And that’s a Sad Thing.

News Roundup

Bad News

And today:


...with all the usual mil-spec quality controls one has come to expect from the MoD.


...so, our 2A rights are safe, then.


...and to think, they stopped working on that silly cancer cure thing, just for this.  I suspect government funding is behind this one.


...yeah, that “soft on crime approach” is working everywhere it’s tried.


...good fucking question.  Too bad it wasn’t Biden asking it.


...uh, I hate to break it to you, Blimpo, but I have more chance of winning New Hampshire than you do.

From the Dept. of Global Cooling Climate Warming Change©:


...as opposed to the date they predicted in 2001:  January 12, 2015.

From the Dept. of Health, two opinions:


...as written by “experts”, and the following appeared in the same newspaper on the very same day:


...and I’ll call next time I’m in town, I promise.


...call me when when a bunch of people die from this latest variant — because nobody has yet, despite all the fearmongering.

From the Wild Kingdom:


...like sharks need any help in that department.


...1. shoot it. 2. shoot it again. 3. shoot the owner.

In Economics News:


… ...don’t say he didn’t warn ya.

From the Heart of Stone Department:


...too bad it wasn’t on the return trip, but them’s the breaks.


...okay, how many of you have ever thought about doing this?

...yeah, me too.

And in RES INSIGNIFICA:

       

  ...and on a parallel train of thought:


 

And lest you think I never give you anything useful in these Roundups:

(link)

Caliber Comparison

The Gun Thing

Longtime Friend & Reader John C. sent me this email over the past weekend:

Kim,
I found this article (“6.5 Creedmoor vs. .308 Winchester”) and thought you might find it interesting. I have .308 dies, a .308 Savage bolt gun, and if I get the urge to build another AR I’d do it in .308 because I have the dies. Not enough difference for me to collect another caliber, I’m slowing down.
A buddy was asking about it, though, and I said if he has no .308 and is getting a new gun he should consider the 6.5 Creedmoor (CM). If he has a .308 I said stick with it. He’ll likely not ever shoot beyond 500 yards. Your thoughts?
I thought it was a pretty good article, but unless I think I’ll take up F-Class (unlikely), like the author I’m not gonna think about it for me any more.
Cheers,
John

This was my response:

John,
I enjoyed the article.  My additional thoughts are as follows.

For 95% of all shooting, anything more than 400 yards is unlikely. (Targets and long-distance disciplines excepted, and the other 5% if you’re hunting antelope in eastern Montana, for example.)

In my opinion, therefore, the only difference between the .30x and the .25x (6.5mm, .270 Win etc) is that the latter doesn’t recoil as hard. As someone once said, they’re all good enough that the deer won’t know the difference. It’s the reason I prefer the 6.5x55mm Swede over just about any other: plenty of range (further than I can confidently shoot at), lots of penetration (high sectional density/SD), flat trajectory and so on.

If you’re a devotee of the .308, it’s fine. It may be the best all-purpose medium cartridge ever made, taken across every kind of use (military, hunting or target). I just prefer not to beat my shoulder up if I can avoid it. It’s the same reason I prefer 7x57mm over the 8mm: more or less the same effectiveness, smaller bruise.

Now that said, I love shooting. I love shooting, a lot. Which means that I pull the trigger more, in a single range session, than 75% of other shooters, and under those circumstances, recoil is a big thing.

Postscript:

It’s one of those things where you really don’t have to get all worked up over finding the “perfect” cartridge — trying all sorts of different calibers, loads etc. — and letting the perfect be the enemy of the good (or in this case, good enough).

Frankly, I think that riflemen need to find the cartridge/chambering which suits their personal criteria (mine, as above: maximum effectiveness with the lowest possible recoil), then find the cartridge (bullet weight, manufacturer, muzzle velocity whatever) which works the best in your rifle, and lay in a boatload of ammo of those specs (or reload accordingly, if you’re that way inclined).

Then shoot it lots, and become a master rifleman.

…or, as the above linked article puts it:

In Praise Of The Fish-Bellied

Gratuitous Chick Pics

As a Registered White Person Of Severely Anglo-Saxon Heritage, I have a very pale skin.  When newly born, my hair was actually white-blonde, but later darkened to ash-blonde and then tawny-blonde in my twenties and thirties (and thence to gray, but we all know about that part).  My eyes:  blue.  My skin has remained stubbornly pale — suntanning, in my case, is actually a brief period of ow-ow-ow burn red, followed by (if I’m lucky) a couple days of sorta-tanned, and then it reverts to its habitual color of white.

That’s me;  but what it means is that as a paleface, I have no problem with light-complexioned women — in fact, in most cases I find pale white skin unbearably sexy.  The old (Victorian?) attitude of “pale skin means ladylike, dark skin means farm worker” must somehow have wormed itself into my psyche — I have no idea if this is even possible, but who cares? — because my belle idéal  has always been a pale, even fish-belly-white skin.

Hence of course my adoration of redheads.  Here’s Julianne Moore, for example:

 

(I know she’s an insufferable liberal twerp, but I don’t want to talk politics to her;  my discussions would preferably be more of a Ugandan nature.)

All this came to me when I read this little piece:

Angela Scanlon has revealed that while she’s embraced her glitzy Strictly [Come Dancing] makeover, there’s one show tradition that she won’t be adhering to. The presenter, 39, has revealed she’s drawn the line at having a spray tan during her time on the show after refusing to cover her naturally pale skin.

Angela, who is partnered with pro dancer Carlos Gu, previously admitted it’s taken her 15 years to accept her complexion, sharing the insight during an appearance on Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel, where her specialist subject was redheads.

Young Angela has featured on these pages before, so Loyal Readers will know of whom I speak.  Here’s a reminder, for the forgetful / ignorant ones among you:

…and here she is in the aforementioned show:

And for those interested in such things, here are her legs, without fake tan:

I think I may need another Breakfast Gin.  Or a cold shower.

Still Turning

Resistance

Last week I talked about the anti-ULEZ movement over in Londonistan.

But wait! There’s more!

Furious locals chased away a Ulez crew – some of whom were driving Sadiq Khan’s mobile ‘spy’ vans used to enforce the scheme. Footage of the incident shows angry locals ejecting the Ulez team from Sunningvale Avenue, in Biggin Hill, southeast London.

Activists opposed to Mr Khan’s flagship policy – which last month expanded to cover the entire city – have already attacked hundreds of static cameras prompting the London Mayor to roll out a fleet of vehicles to catch those flouting the rules.

But these too have become a target, with opponents to the Ulez – who call themselves ‘Blade Runners’ – slashing their tyres, spray painting cameras and smashing windows.

Anti-Ulez activists held a yellow high visibility jacket in front of one of the cameras while locals berated the Ulez workers.

Images show one of the Ulez vehicles with its windows and windscreen smashed, in the latest escalation by activists determined to thwart Mr Khan’s much-hated levy.

Next step for Burgomeister  Khan:  spy vans to see who’s harassing the spy vans?

My reaction: