Author: Kim du Toit

Fine By Us

Education

This is interesting:

A radical activist who believes black students should only be taught by same-race teachers has received $20million from billionaires such as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

Sharif El-Mekki has lobbied for a focus on anti-racism education in public schools through his prominent nonprofit and time as an adviser to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, as reported by The Free Press.

A former middle and high school teacher, El-Mekki lobbies through his nonprofit, the Center for Black Educator Development, CBED, which describes its mission as a ‘world where… all black students are taught by high-quality, same-race teachers’ and where ‘all teachers demonstrate high levels of expertise in anti-racist mindsets.’

CBED has over $19.5 million in assets thanks to donations from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

And Brother Sharif looks like about what you suspect he would:

Yeah, by all means pull Black kids out of these “White” public schools and put them into all-Black institutions.

Then watch as public schools’ test scores improve and crime goes down.  What will happen in the Black schools is as predictable as the sunrise, just a lot more depressing, and will need still more support from White liberal assholes (without any improvement to show for it, of course).

Somewhere out there, Martin Luther King is spinning in his grave at 12,000rpm, while all those old Afrikaner apartheid supporters are howling with laughter.

Separate but equal, indeed. It’ll work about as well as all other initiatives that have come from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose sponsorship of OBED allows ol’ Sharif to pull an annual salary of nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

Race hustling has always been a way for Black “leaders” like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to earn the big bucks, but it’s almost as good for the lesser lights, like the above.  For their followers… not so much.

Let African-Americans sink.

Range Report: Ruger Redhawk (.45 Colt/ACP)

Gun/Ammo Tests, The Gun Thing

Through ways too complicated to explain here, I came upon this beast:

…so I took said beast off to the range a couple days back because of course I would.

This Ruger Redhawk is chambered, as in the title, to shoot the manly .45 Colt/Long Colt cartridge, and .45 ACP with the use of moon clips.

Here it is, with the S&W K-frame Mod 65 .357 Mag and minuscule J-frame Mod 637 .38 Spec, by comparison:

The Redhawk, as they say, is a handful — almost more than a handful even in my paw.

“So how does it shoot, Kim?”

Well, it has the typical Ruger trigger:  very stiff (but smooooth) double action (maybe 15lbs), and a slightly gritty single-action pull of about 3-4lbs, best as I can guess.  I see LOTS of dry-firing ahead, or maybe a trigger job is in its future.

As for recoil:  .45 Colt 250gr ammo beats the shit out of my creaking wrists, and the lighter 200gr only a tad less.  Were I to press it into bedside duty (to replace the Mod 65), I’d load it with the 200gr boolets.  However:  using my standard Norma 175gr .45 ACP rounds (what I load in my 1911) in the moon clips, it is an absolute joy to shoot, for so big a revolver.

Accuracy is about what I can shoot, i.e. not bad for a first time:  2″ groups at 30 feet, with the occasional flyer.  (I’ve shot the equivalent S&W Mod 625, but over twenty years ago and I can’t remember it well enough to make a comparison.)  Also, that 4″ barrel does have its limitations;  a 6″ barrel would be better, but man that would make it even bigger and heavier.

Which brings me back to the Redhawk’s size.  It is seriously big, and almost too big for me;  but that weight does help soak up recoil, oh yes it does.

Ordinarily, I’d be a little torn about keeping a gun that (for me) is a little marginal, what with its size, recoil and stiff trigger.  Any one of those is usually cause for a swap meet;  all three?  Hmmmm.

And yet:  there is something about holding in your hand a gun that is indestructible, and that will handle anything you can load into it with consummate ease and reliability.  Because if ever I venture into wild country with big bad toothy animules that want to eat me or worse, I would load up some Buffalo Bore monster +P 300gr loads, and feel very adequately well-armed, with a gun that just will not break under the stress thereof.

That is a Ruger Redhawk, and that is why I’m going to keep it.

A quick word about the new range.  Since I moved away from Plano, my old stamping ground at the Mission Creek range proved to be just too far for a weekly trip.

However:  allow me to introduce y’ll to Texas Legends in Allen TX.  Lovely new range, it is, staffed by silver-haired old farts who are pleasant and only too willing to sit and chew the fat awhile.  And they’re not fussy about what guns and what ammo you shoot (CCI Blazer and its ilk is verboten  only because the aluminum casings are non-magnetic and difficult to pick up.)  No 100-yard range, but a 3-bay 50-yard rifle-only range is just fine for my needs.

And if you get there between 10am and 1pm during the week, there’s a 50% Old Fart discount.  I spent less than $15 with a target.  This is going to cost me a ton from now on, not in range fees but in ammo.

Starting tomorrow.

Hey, it’s a shitty life, but someone has to live it.

A Big Middle Finger To The Dept. Of Energy

Bureaucracy, Gummint

Via the Goddess Diogenes herself:

We here at the Department of Energy wanted to thank you for being conscientious about your energy usage this summer. Your efforts haven’t gone unnoticed. As a token of our gratitude, we wanted to highlight all the small but powerful steps you’ve taken to conserve energy over the past few months—and…

…then it falls headlong off the High Cliffs of Sarcasm immediately.  Read it all, but first I’m going to issue a standard Swallow Coffee Before Reading Alert.

(I meant to post this over a week ago, saving the link, but it fell through the cracks as these things do.  Fear not, for despite my stupidity, her post is as timely as its original publication date.  Enjoy.)

Not Just Chrysler, Not Just Manhattan

Architecture

I wailed about the difficulties facing the people trying to fix up / sell New York City’s Chrysler Building, and saw the possibility of the disappearance of that wonderful structure.

Well, it’s not just Manhattan.  Heeeere’s London:

A number of major London office blocks costing more than £300million each have recently been put up for sale at the same time.

The four buildings have hit the market at a time where deals have been extremely rare due to rising interest rates and continuous uncertainty about working from home.

All the same issues facing the Chrysler.

Unlike the Chrysler, however, the four London skyscrapers are anything but wonderful:

The first three are of the Le Corbusier-Gropius-Modernist ilk — and frankly would be no great loss to any skyline, let alone London’s — while the last, the aptly-nicknamed Can of Ham, is an architectural carbuncle of the direst kind, but at least it has something of a sense of fun about it.

And while I and many others would dearly miss the Chrysler Building, these British edifices would not only not be missed, but applauded in their implosion.

So mote it be.