Meanwhile in Plano:
…or as we call it, “First week of summer”.
Author: Kim du Toit
Proper Advice
Megan Fox has some advice on “How to Go Out in Public as a Trump Supporter”.
This because White House staffers have been tossed out of restaurants, cinemas etc. by screeching SJW / Commie / Democrat / Antifa [lots of overlap] loonies, and because we’re seeing this kind of thing in the so-shull meejah:
Unable to get what they want peacefully (e.g. via elections and rational argument), it seems as though the Left is starting to preach and foment violence, as they always do under such circumstances. And as George Orwell once intimated, the Left are all for violence / revolution / [insert violent action e.g. gun confiscation, mass executions or gulag sentences here], as long as they themselves as individuals aren’t required to do it.
So my advice to all Trump supporters is rather more succinct, and less tongue-in-cheek, than Ms. Fox’s:
“How to Go Out in Public as a Trump Supporter”?
Armed.
As a wise man once said: “I’m not going to start anything. But I sure as hell am going to finish it.” I wonder how the Left will feel if they actually have to reap the whirlwind they’re sowing.
Update: Looks like I’m not the only one offering this advice.
Quote Of The Day
“So what we see is that there is no direct correlation at the global level between firearm ownership and violence.” — Anna Alvazzi del Frate (program director, Small Arms Survey)
There are several interesting snippets contained in this study, which blessedly seems to be focused on data and not an agenda.
The one that’s got the most airplay has been of course that the United States constitutes nearly half of all the guns held in private hands — yeah, I know, we need to do better — but the quote above is, I think, the clincher in the study. This is because in the grand scheme of things, who and how many gun owners there are is just a statistic; the more important information is how those gun owners use their guns — and the most interesting observation is that once you exclude military gun use, the most common use for privately-held guns, even with crime included in the incidence, is suicide.
And of course because suicide is going to occur regardless — whether by guns, pills, hanging, falls, jumping in front of trains, whatever — it’s quite clear that including gun suicide in “violent crime” statistics (which is what most of the would-be gun confiscators do) is a mendacious device. (I know, when someone eats their gun there’s a violent outcome because brain splatter, but it’s hardly a more violent outcome than, say, hitting the sidewalk after a jump from a height of twenty stories, where no gun is involved.)
It’s a fascinating read, and it’s so clinical that not even TIME magazine can spin it into a Schumeresque sound bite. In fact, the only reasonable sound bite from the study is the conclusion at the top of this post, which is why it’s the Quote Of The Day.
Yeah, That Worked
“That” being the raft of laws and regulations which prohibit felons from owning guns.
Authorities in California acting on a tip swept into a rural home and seized more than 500 guns from a convicted felon, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.
The tip indicated Manuel Fernandez, 60, was “in possession of a large arsenal of firearms,” the department said in a statement. On Thursday, a team of state and local officers raided the house in Agua Dulce, about 45 miles north of Los Angeles. Authorities immediately seized 432 guns, the department said.
The next day, another 91 guns were found hidden at Fernandez’s home, authorities said.
Yup: looks like all those laws which California adds to the federal laws really work, huh? I mean, a felon possessing guns? That’s doubleplusunpossible in the Golden [Shower] State, you betcha.
And yet he got the guns, 500 of them, somehow… so California probably needs more laws, like this one. At least, that seems to be their thinking, such as it is.
Fucking morons.
Dept Of Righteous Shootings
Also Quote Of The Day:
“I had my own personal AK-47.”
Here’s the summary: man comes home, finds two (!) choirboys ransacking his house. They see him, start to pull guns on him, whereupon Our Hero grabs his “personal AK-47” from a closet and ventilates both said choirboys until they are dead.
Now go and read the luscious details, including the part where the DA doesn’t press charges on Our Hero.
Afterthought: He seems apprehensive that the choirboys’ acquaintances may attempt some sort of revenge. My suggestion: buy a couple spare AK mags. Bet they don’t; would you try and whack a guy who’s prepared to kill people over a TV set? It is, as they say, to laugh.
Aero-Nausea
As Longtime Readers know well, I absolutely hate the modern (circa 1980?) trend of using wind tunnels to design cars. Because aerodynamics have unbreakable rules, it stands to reason that if wind tunnels are the sine qua non of car design, then eventually all cars will look the same.
It’s not incredible that so many cars look so similar. It’s incredible that cars look different at all.
Well, they don’t look different, not at all.
And it gets up my nose, because it’s all part of the Great Global Homogeneity Conspiracy. (Okay, there is no conspiracy; people form naturally into herds of one kind or another, so no conspiracy is really needed.)
All you need is for Government (the ultimate homogenizer) to mandate that all an auto manufacturer’s car models combined can only do x, and the rest is history. In the case of the above, x is emissions, where Gummint has imposed its nonsensical CAFE restrictions (To Save Our Planet And Make The World A Better Place For Our Childrennnn!!!), so the manufacturers have to make cars as sleek as possible, lower wind resistance / drag, and because it’s therefore easier to lower fuel consumption by making cars teardrop-shaped, bring in the Almighty Wind Tunnel.
Here’s the part of the linked article which really gets up my nose:
Suzy Cody, GM’s head of vehicle performance for aerodynamics, says this technology is the bridge between design and engineering. “Look,” she says, “it doesn’t matter how great your aerodynamics are if only ten people buy the car. Design matters. And active aero helps enable design.” But what if, I posit, there’s a propulsion breakthrough? Right now, aerodynamics are tied to miles per gallon and electric range. What if we had batteries that were good for 600 miles of range and charged in ten minutes? Could we stop worrying about every crease in the bodywork? Could we just give those designers the flared fenders and not sweat it? In other words, would aero cease to be such a big deal? Cody, unsurprisingly, seemed aghast that I would suggest such a thing. “Even if you had a battery like that, good aero gives you other options. You could have a smaller battery, make the car cheaper, give it more passenger space, make it quieter. Aero will always be important.”
Silly me. And here I was, thinking that for any manufacturer, what the customer wants would be more important, but no. We have to let the Dilberts create the products — and when Engineering controls Marketing, you get bullshit statements like the above, and stupid shit like this:
“We can affect aero maybe 10 percent one way or the other—if the coefficient of drag is .30, maybe we can get it down to .27,” Karbon says. “And that might represent three-tenths of a mile per gallon in fuel economy, depending on the vehicle.”
Only an engineer (or a total dork, some overlap) can get excited by this. It’s the same as the wankers who get rigid erections because their supercar beats a competitor to 60mph by 0.1 seconds, paying little heed that this means nothing, absolute nada in the real world (as does that breathtaking 0.3mpg saving in fuel consumption).
This obsession with aerodynamic perfection means that instead of getting great-looking cars like this:
…we get homo-cars [sic] that look like this:
I know, I know; y’all are going to mock me for loving old stuff more than the new stuff — Mr. Free Market in particular is going to be snorting into his whisky glass when he reads this — but the problem with the New Stuff (as manifested by the Toyota Prius above) is that it all looks the same. Note, from the same manufacturer, the Yaris:
Or, changing brands from Toyota to Nissan, this:
…or even VW, once the owner of the most iconic of car shapes:
No. Just… no. It’s small wonder that if you said to me: “Kim, you have to buy a small car, and you could have any car you like,” there would be no doubt what I’d get:
Not aerodynamic, too small, completely pointless and with absolutely no safety features whatsoever. It’s my (over-) reaction to enforced homogenization. (And most annoyingly to the enviro-weenies, the Moke gets close to 50mpg. So there.)
But here’s the thing: I bet I could pull more chicks with the Mini-Moke than with any of the above-pictured sleek and efficient econoboxes.
And I’m not even interested in pulling chicks. But you know what kind of chicks would prefer the Moke? This kind:
…while everyone knows what kind of chick gets pulled by a Prius:
Screw conformity, the hell with efficiency, and fuck aerodynamics: I want a car that’s FUN and looks either splendid (like the Morgan Plus 4 at the top), eclectic (like the Moke), impressive (1954 Mercedes 300 SC), or flat-out gorgeous (hello, E-type). No doubt I’ll soon be marked as an undesirable and hauled off to the gulag for re-education just because when it comes to cars, I choose character and beauty over efficiency.
Just wait till they hear my opinion of those “efficient” automatic transmissions…