Oct 2009
FRIDAY SURPRISE: Not my type.
Friday, October 30, 2009 Filed in:
Friday
Surprise!, Completely
irrelevant
Some years back I had a job that required me to interface on a daily basis with a local governmental body. There was a form they required us to fill out and mail to them; a form with an odd dimension. I've forgotten the exact measurements, but it wasn't a full 8.5x11, or a half-sheet, or even a quarter-sheet. It wasn't one of the common postcard sizes, either - it was a completely custom size on 3-part NCR paper.
At one point I was writing a piece of software to automate the process of gathering the information and filling out the form. I really wanted to submit the data electronically, but that wasn't an option. The second best choice would have been to simply print the information on an 8.5x11 sheet. No, they insisted, it had to be the same form factor as the handwritten form.
WTH??
Using all the diplomacy I could muster I tried for weeks to negotiate a compromise. I asked time and again why we needed to use THAT specific form size, and all I could get out of them was "that's what we use." Why, I wanted to know, couldn't they use something else, something more common and less costly?
I finally got one of their people to spill the beans: the reason for this odd form size was because, many years ago (decades, actually), the office now occupied by this agency acquired a little filing cabinet whose original purpose was unknown. The cabinet's drawers were permanently configured for this odd paper size.
At some point the office was vacated, but the strange cabinet remained behind. After several such occupant shuffles, this agency moved into the space and there was that cabinet! It was pressed into use for this form, and that was the end of the discussion. Our company was being dictated to by an orphaned filing cabinet older than its users, and the situation was unlikely to change because "that's the way we've always done it."
I read this story about the NYPD and had a flashback.
-=[ Grant ]=-
|
I almost forgot...
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Filed in:
General gun
stuff, Humor
Last weekend I was assisting at a Defensive Shotgun course taught by Georges Rahbani ("The Best Rifle Instructor You've Never Heard Of"). A couple of the participants were discussing a problem with a ParaOrdnance pistol when I walked up. "Well, it's not like you should be surprised", I said, "when the brand's name tells you everything you need to know."
They stared at me blankly.
"Para- is a prefix meaning 'similar to' or 'resembling' ", I continued. "So, Para-Ordnance means that it's only 'sort of a gun' ."
I'm here to tell you that some people are seriously humor impaired.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Crazy Ivan!
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Filed in:
Revolvers
The Firearms Blog reports that KBP, the Russian arms maker, has introduced a "tactical" version of their MTs 225 revolving shotgun. (Basically, they took their standard sporting arm and added a folding stock.) You can make what you will of the revolving shotgun concept, but I liken it to the various revolving rifles which have come and gone: this is a good idea, why?
What's more interesting to me is to take a wander through their website. They make several unique revolvers, and the descriptions are worth reading too. "...for suppression of hooligan actions" ?!?
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 6: response "systems".
Monday, October 26, 2009 Filed in:
Self defense, Techniques &
Training
Last week I mentioned that I'm not a fan of the Cooper Color Codes of Awareness. In fact, I think they're downright silly. Why? Because they serve no purpose, which makes them a distraction from learning something that might actually be useful.
The Cooper Color Code system was popularized by Jeff Cooper, the founder of Gunsite. The four Codes are, as Cooper explained them, "a means of setting one’s mind into the proper condition when exercising lethal violence." They describe "a mental state which enables you to take a difficult psychological step."
Let's start with his explanation: "into the proper condition." Who is to say what the proper mental condition is when facing a threat to one's life? Having talked to a few survivors, and having read the accounts of many more, one's mental state can vary tremendously: some are angry, some scared, some confused. To arrogantly proclaim that there is one mental condition with which to confront an attacker is quite presumptuous, particularly when all of those I've mentioned (and probably more I've not encountered) were sufficient to handle each incident.
I submit to you that the "difficult psychological step", which is the decision/willingness to use lethal force, is made before the attack occurs. In fact, it's one of the first decisions one makes when starting into the armed lifestyle. The sequence for most people looks something like this:
1) You first acknowledge that your life has value to you, and such value is greater than that of the person attacking you.
2) Because of that, you decide that you are willing to use lethal force to protect your own life, and the life of your loved ones.
3) You learn to recognize a threat (stimulus) in such a way that you have time to defend (respond.)
4) You train to perform the proper defense (response) to the threat (stimulus.)
Cooper says that the Codes are "a means of setting one’s mind." This says that they're intended as a guide or a system to achieve a specific result. This requires that one judge any input (the stimulus or threat) against the system (the colored 'conditions'), then adopt the indicated response. Who is really going to do that? "Ooops, I can't go into Condition Red yet, because the situational parameters aren't all in accordance!" Silly, no? Silly, yes!
It also assumes that one is in complete control of one's physiological state. The problem with this line of thinking is that the response activity isn't digital or discrete. It is a continuous spectrum, with many things (including adrenal response and activation of the sympathetic nervous system) completely out of the individual's control. What happens when one component is in one condition, and another is at a different one? Nothing, of course, but a system requires that they must be reconciled - otherwise, of what use is the system?
The Codes are completely arbitrary combinations and ignore the fact that fights are idiosyncratic things, as are the responses of the defenders. The state of mind of the person holding the initiative (say, as a soldier or a law enforcement officer) is quite different than that of the person forced into a reactive response to an attack. Particularly for the latter, the states are quite irrelevant; the only thing that matters is the appropriate response to a specific stimulus at a particular time.
The Codes do nothing in the way of guiding those responses. Cooper himself said that they were not intended to do so, but again: if they are not a guide, of what use are they? If what he says is true, why are there specific response recommendations for each condition - down to whether or not your gun is in its holster? The system, at least according to the originator's own description, is self contradicting.
When faced with a threat a human being performs both instinctive and intuitive actions, the specific combination of which will vary depending on the situation. To try to constrain a person's responses to an arbitrary combination (whether one admits to doing so or not) is the equivalent of forcing everyone to wear size 14 boots regardless of their foot size.
It seems to me that instead of memorizing a bunch of colors, then obsessing about what color you are "in", it is better to spend your mental currency on training appropriate stimulus/response combinations. The Codes sound tacticool as all get-out, but that's about all they do. They serve no real or actual purpose, and in my opinion only obfuscate the situation.
-=[ Grant ]=-
FRIDAY SURPRISE: Yes, we have no bananas. Or anything else.
I decided that I'd raked enough muck for one week, and that you deserved a day off. So, it's Friday Surprise time again! (Don't worry, I'll resume the Self Defense series on Monday.)
Today we're going to see what happens when a megalomaniac decides that he needs to export the American Way Of Life into a jungle. In Brazil. Let's just say things didn't go as planned.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 5: you can't get there from here.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 Filed in:
Self defense, Techniques &
Training
Most people go to Gun Skool because they believe it will teach them "how to be safe." As I opined last time, learning to shoot does not necessarily make one safe; learning how to identify and avoid conflict does. These folks are simply asking more of the institutions than they're able to provide.
As I noted in one of the first installments, the market for firearm training is quite small relative to the number of gun owners. If a firearm trainer wants to stay in business, he/she must provide what the market demands, and the market demands SHOOTING!
In class after class I've seen student evaluations come back with a consistent complaint: "not enough!" They want more shooting, more "super ninja warrior secrets", and more talk about 9mm vs. .45ACP. Gun Skools respond by upping round counts and shoehorning in more techniques ("we'll show you 53 different ways to perform a tactical reload!") to satisfy the preoccupation with hardware. This leaves precious little time for teaching any of the 'soft' skills that would actually keep the students safe.
Consider this: the typical class is 2 days long, usually over a weekend. I once roughed out a syllabus for a very basic class in observational skills, one designed to improve the student's ability to gather and analyze the information that abounds in the world around him/her. That's a pretty narrow focus, but even given that - and a reduced number of skill building activities - it still wouldn't fit in an 8-hour day. (I'm very big on actually building skills in class, not just introducing a topic and then dashing off to another topic.)
Now imagine a Gun Skool offering a self-defense class where the students spent more than half their weekend working on things that don't go "bang", are never going to go "bang", and in fact are all about NOT going "bang". I can confidently guarantee that the students would complain to high heaven: "I came to shoot, not sit in a classroom!" A few sessions like that, and the Gun Skool would be out of business.
Because of the hardware-centric curricula, whatever proactive/preventive elements that could be covered usually get reduced to a short and ambiguous lecture about 'awareness' (remember what I said last time?) and a presentation of the Cooper Color Codes (which I abhor - but that's another article for another day.) Again, they are providing what the market demands.
There are also limitations on what they are capable of providing. Sadly, in my experience, most Gun Skool instructors just aren't conversant enough with the concept of proaction/prevention to do it any justice, even if their students would allow them to try.
In order to properly address the issues, an instructor needs to have familiarity with a wide range of fields related to how the brain acquires and uses information: neuroscience, psychiatry, cognitive development, neuropsychology, and emerging fields such as neural hermeneutics. It requires him/her to know about things like thin-slicing, pattern matching, mirror neurons, and conscious and unconscious functions of the brain. That's just for starters.
How many 'gunnies' do you know with that breadth of knowledge, and how many of THOSE are capable of transferring that knowledge in usable form to a student? Not many - if any - I'll wager.
It's the chicken and the egg: without a good institution to teach those topics, there is no place for other instructors to learn them to teach the next generation of trainers. Instead, they focus on what they already know: hardware. The result? More classes that teach people 53 different ways to reload their pistol.
That 'other stuff' is intellectually challenging to study, difficult to present, and on top of that isn't terribly sexy. That's a tough sell.
More to come...stay tuned.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 4: fundamental misconceptions.
Monday, October 19, 2009 Filed in:
Self defense, Techniques &
Training
In the last installment we looked at the idea that most people - due to a lack of training and resulting options - tend to use the gun as a first line of defense. To those owners the gun is a talisman, imbued with the ability to keep its bearer safe and sound simply by its presence. The problem with this line of thinking is that the gun, being a reactive tool, cannot keep you safe. It can only help you deal with that which has made you unsafe.
Let's look at the word 'safe'. It means "not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed." The implication is clear: to actually be safe, one must avoid violent incidents in the first place. That's not what the gun does.
The gun's function is to extract the user from an incident once it has begun. Massad Ayoob often says that the gun is best thought of as a "rescue tool", in the same functional league as a fire extinguisher or first aid kit. Neither of those items prevents anything, but they do make it possible to survive something. The gun needs to be approached with the same attitude.
Safety in the personal sense requires layers of protection that are operational before the gun is ever needed, (hopefully) precluding the need to even draw the thing. These layers consist of both early warning (to let you know that something is a potential threat) and deterrence (prompting the threat to migrate to another, easier, target.)
It's important that you not think of layers in broad terms; they are individual things that together are stronger than they are alone. One layer might be a thorough understanding of criminal behavior, another could be the manner in which you walk, still another could be a flashlight to illuminate dark corners or a motion sensing alarm system. Think "micro", not "macro".
You can't, for instance, say that one of your protective layers is "awareness." Awareness isn't a thing that you can acquire in an of itself; it's a state that exists as the sum total of a number of observational or data-gathering skills, some of which are instinctive and some of which are intuitive.
Once the proactive/prevention layers have been breached by the criminal, then - and only then - is it time for the reactive or rescue layers to be brought into action. By now you should guess where this is going: most of us spend our training time on the reactive/rescue skills, because it's a lot more fun than the other stuff. The result is that the 'soft' skills are often woefully underdeveloped. The prevention part of the equation is weak, leaving nothing but the reaction part to pick up the slack.
The result is that no matter how nice and tight the groups are, no matter how fast the draw, an increase in shooting skill probably makes one no safer than the person who didn't get that level of training. The quantity of shooting classes and the number of certifications and master ratings is really quite irrelevant, if the gun is being used for relatively low level tasks. Without security layers interposed between the gun carrier and the assailant, that's what happens.
(Be very clear: this doesn't address the personal gratification that one might get from achieving those things, which may be considerable. We're focusing solely on the safety aspects of increased shooting skills.)
That's because you generally can't learn the proactive/prevention stuff at Gun Skool, and next time I'll explain why.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 3: how much is enough?
Saturday, October 17, 2009 Filed in:
Self defense, Techniques &
Training
How much training is enough? That depends, of course, on the nature of the training - but it also depends, perhaps to a greater degree, on how it's used.
As I hinted last time, an onion gives us a good framework to both build and evaluate a defensive posture. The onion, as you know, is composed of many layers; to get to the center requires that one remove layer after layer. It requires a certain amount of dedication to do so, because you can't go through Layer #3 without first getting through Layers 1 & 2.
Ideally, our self defense posture should be similarly layered. To breach each successive layer should require more skill and determination from the attacker than the last. The assailant has to be capable of getting through the layers, and must really want to do so. The thinnest layers stop the less able criminals, while the more robust layers serve to thwart those whose skill level is higher.
As it happens, there are more of the former than the latter. For instance, there are lots of people who play baseball as a recreational activity. Go to just about any park and you'll see lots of local league games. Most of the players are better than the average guy off the street, but usually not by a lot. A subset of those might have been good enough to play ball in high school; fewer still on a college team; maybe, occasionally, you'll encounter one who managed to make it to a semi-pro club. The chances of finding a player who ever took the field in the majors is slim to none - there aren't a lot of those people around. The lower the skill requirements, the more people participate.
Criminals are like that, too - there are more petty shoplifters than jewel thieves, because the skill necessary to rip off a DVD from Target is considerably less than stealing a million-dollar necklace from Donald Trump's home.
The outer layers of our defensive onion are those things that serve to discourage the least skilled, and the largest number, of the criminal fraternity. One of those outer layers might consist of a well honed ability to unconsciously make visual observation of what goes on around you, and to predict from scant data an impending assault. This doesn't seem to come naturally; it is learned. Because there is virtually no place where it can be learned (short of a self-directed study regimen), I think most people end up with observational skills that leave something to be desired.
For them, the gun tends to serve as a replacement. It defaults to being one of their outer defensive layers because there is no other outer layer. When it does get pointed at an assailant, it is probably against the least skilled and least motivated of attackers, simply because they are the most numerous. (I am not suggesting that the gun is necessarily used inappropriately, only that it may end up being used in situations that developed outside of the defender's base of knowledge.)
This, I think, partly explains why so many people are able to defend themselves with a gun, even without specialized training. If the situation is relatively simple, with an adversary who is not all that motivated, you just don't need to be a Navy Seal to prevail. As attackers ascend the ladder of skill, motivation, or numbers, so too must the ability of the defender.
Ironically it's the person with the well developed outer defensive layers, the one who is least likely to find him or herself in trouble, who needs firearm training the most. This is because the gun will be one of their inner layers and only exposed to attackers with a superior skill set, the inferior having been put off by the lesser layers.
In other words, the less likely it is that you'll need to use your gun, the more training you'll need in how to use it - because your assailants will be more dangerous.
Unfortunately, most people do it backwards. I'll save that can of worms for next time!
-=[ Grant ]=-
FRIDAY SURPRISE: It's Saturday!
Saturday, October 17, 2009 Filed in:
Friday
Surprise!, Blog stuff
Yes, I know I didn't have a Surprise for you yesterday. I'd intended to present instead the latest installment of the Self Defense Thoughts, but fell asleep.
I write most of my blog articles in the evening, then finish them up and post them at breakfast. On Thursday evening I fell asleep, and Friday I had to get up very early (and miss my breakfast!) so that I could be somewhere first thing in the morning. The blog got ignored in the rush that ensued.
The latest installment of the series follows. Enjoy!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 2: where is the value?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 Filed in:
Self defense, Techniques &
Training
Does firearm training have any real value?
(In this discussion understand that I'm not referring to basic handling and safety instruction, such as the NRA famously provides. By training, I mean the defensive or 'tactical' courses provided at various private facilities: Gunsite, Front Sight, Thunder Ranch, and all of the smaller and lesser known schools across the country.)
Getting back to the reason for this missive, I'm intrigued by the notion that if one possesses a gun, then one must have (with the emphasis on must) a certain kind of training in order to stand a chance of successfully using it in a self defense role. History would suggest otherwise.
The wide availability of training in the martial art of the firearm is of relatively recent vintage. Despite practical firearms for personal carry being available for more than 150 years, it's really only been in the last 30 that firearms schools oriented toward self defense have become commonplace. For well over a century, people apparently got along just fine, thank you, with no tactical training at all. Perhaps their father or uncle showed them how to load and unload the gun, and perhaps they got a few pointers on shooting, but that was it.
Even in this day, with quality instruction more available than ever, the number of people who take serious firearm training is still a very small fraction of total gun owners; a niche, if you will. A huge percentage of the gun owning public apparently doesn't feel a pressing need to go to Gun Skul, yet they seem to prevail far more often than not in encounters with criminals.
Why? Because the highest probability of personal attack comes in the form of what can be termed the low-level crime. There are more simple attacks, perpetrated by the simplest of attackers, than complex attacks carried out by skilled criminals. It stands to reason that a low-level attack can be defeated by the simplest of tactics - that of presenting a gun. This explains why so many confrontations are thwarted without firing a shot, and while people without training seem to win with great regularity.
The problem is that not all attacks fit that mold. As we get further out on the scale of attack magnitude, training becomes more important. This opens up a serious can of worms, however: what kind of attacks justify more training? How much training, and of what kind, is enough? Is enough ever enough?
The answer is more complex than you might think, but can be explained just by looking at an onion. Seriously.
Next time.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Thoughts on self defense training, Part 1: it starts with attitude.
Monday, October 12, 2009 Filed in:
Self defense, Techniques &
Training
Last Wednesday I asked you
to consider the concept of self-defense training, specifically as
it relates to the use of firearms. This was inspired by the
comments over at Breda's, some of which I think show
an incomplete understanding of the concepts involved.
Specifically, I'm interested in the assertion that one needs to learn some amorphous concept called 'mindset' in order to prevail in a defensive encounter. In discussions of this nature, one often sees simplistic equations like "gun + mindset = success", along with the assertion that this 'mindset' can only be learned at Gun Skool. Without 'mindset', the proponents claim, the gun is next to useless. (Some stop just short of saying that the gun moves from being an asset to being a liability without it, a belief which comes uncomfortably close to one of the gun-grabber's favorite arguments.)
I've taken - and helped to teach - a few 'advanced' gun classes, and I've sat through many a lecture on 'mindset'. Perhaps it's my own insistence on precise terminology, but I must confess that even my 158 IQ cannot attach a consistent meaning to the term! Trying to derive one from the myriad of explanations extant makes me feel like I'm in the famous Monty Python sketch regarding the Spanish Inquisition:
Let's start at the beginning. When we look at the data brought to us by people such as Gary Kleck, one thing stands out: in the vast majority of self defense cases involving a gun, a shot is never fired. The mere presence of the gun, lawfully presented, is enough to convince the assailant that it would be prudent to select another (softer) target.
The gun, though, is just the medium through which the staunch resistance of the defender is the clearly communicated. Without that desire for and dedication to self preservation, the gun would most certainly be rendered ineffectual. Massad Ayoob has said it best: "Understand that criminals do not fear guns. They are, after all, an armed subculture themselves. What they fear is the resolutely armed man or woman who points that gun at them."
"AHA!", some of you are thinking. "That's the mindset that you can only get with training!" I contend that it is not.
In order to be resolute, as Ayoob describes, one must first possess the innate belief that one's life has value. One must value one's own existence above that of the criminal, otherwise one is unlikely to muster the unwavering commitment to self preservation that so unnerves the attacker.
Domestic violence provides us with the most visible lesson. Part and parcel of the abuser's behavior is to nurture within the victim - slowly and methodically - the idea that her life has no value. Once conditioned, the abuser has no fear that the victim can ever mount an effective defense against his cruelty, because she assigns greater value to her tormenter's existence than to her own.
(Please note that the genders are simply for your author's convenience. I am aware that domestic violence is sometimes woman-on-man, and in gay and lesbian couples there is obviously no gender difference. The dynamic of the abuse/abuser relationship, though, remains pretty constant.)
The unthinking spout "if only the woman would have a gun and proper training, she would never be a victim of her partner!" Here's the reality: it doesn't matter how many rounds she fires, how many mindset lectures she attends, or even if she openly carries her gun. If she doesn't believe, deep down and completely honestly, that her very life has value, she may never be able to defend herself against an attacker - whether or not that attacker is known to her.
Again, this isn't just a female thing. There are plenty of males who lack that basic belief in their own right to self preservation, such attitudes having been systematically denigrated over the last couple of generations. Man or woman, if the belief in one's own value as a human being is missing, it needs to be restored before self defense can become a reality.
This requires some extended time with a mental health professional who understands the issue and can guide the patient to a new understanding of his/her place in the universe. It can't be done in a weekend course with a shooting instructor who barks orders and carries a custom blaster on his hip - no matter how many times he works the word 'mindset' into his collection of cliches.
Am I saying that training has no value? Of course not, but that's the subject of Wednesday's treatise. Stay tuned.
-=[ Grant ]=-
Specifically, I'm interested in the assertion that one needs to learn some amorphous concept called 'mindset' in order to prevail in a defensive encounter. In discussions of this nature, one often sees simplistic equations like "gun + mindset = success", along with the assertion that this 'mindset' can only be learned at Gun Skool. Without 'mindset', the proponents claim, the gun is next to useless. (Some stop just short of saying that the gun moves from being an asset to being a liability without it, a belief which comes uncomfortably close to one of the gun-grabber's favorite arguments.)
I've taken - and helped to teach - a few 'advanced' gun classes, and I've sat through many a lecture on 'mindset'. Perhaps it's my own insistence on precise terminology, but I must confess that even my 158 IQ cannot attach a consistent meaning to the term! Trying to derive one from the myriad of explanations extant makes me feel like I'm in the famous Monty Python sketch regarding the Spanish Inquisition:
Let's start at the beginning. When we look at the data brought to us by people such as Gary Kleck, one thing stands out: in the vast majority of self defense cases involving a gun, a shot is never fired. The mere presence of the gun, lawfully presented, is enough to convince the assailant that it would be prudent to select another (softer) target.
The gun, though, is just the medium through which the staunch resistance of the defender is the clearly communicated. Without that desire for and dedication to self preservation, the gun would most certainly be rendered ineffectual. Massad Ayoob has said it best: "Understand that criminals do not fear guns. They are, after all, an armed subculture themselves. What they fear is the resolutely armed man or woman who points that gun at them."
"AHA!", some of you are thinking. "That's the mindset that you can only get with training!" I contend that it is not.
In order to be resolute, as Ayoob describes, one must first possess the innate belief that one's life has value. One must value one's own existence above that of the criminal, otherwise one is unlikely to muster the unwavering commitment to self preservation that so unnerves the attacker.
Domestic violence provides us with the most visible lesson. Part and parcel of the abuser's behavior is to nurture within the victim - slowly and methodically - the idea that her life has no value. Once conditioned, the abuser has no fear that the victim can ever mount an effective defense against his cruelty, because she assigns greater value to her tormenter's existence than to her own.
(Please note that the genders are simply for your author's convenience. I am aware that domestic violence is sometimes woman-on-man, and in gay and lesbian couples there is obviously no gender difference. The dynamic of the abuse/abuser relationship, though, remains pretty constant.)
The unthinking spout "if only the woman would have a gun and proper training, she would never be a victim of her partner!" Here's the reality: it doesn't matter how many rounds she fires, how many mindset lectures she attends, or even if she openly carries her gun. If she doesn't believe, deep down and completely honestly, that her very life has value, she may never be able to defend herself against an attacker - whether or not that attacker is known to her.
Again, this isn't just a female thing. There are plenty of males who lack that basic belief in their own right to self preservation, such attitudes having been systematically denigrated over the last couple of generations. Man or woman, if the belief in one's own value as a human being is missing, it needs to be restored before self defense can become a reality.
This requires some extended time with a mental health professional who understands the issue and can guide the patient to a new understanding of his/her place in the universe. It can't be done in a weekend course with a shooting instructor who barks orders and carries a custom blaster on his hip - no matter how many times he works the word 'mindset' into his collection of cliches.
Am I saying that training has no value? Of course not, but that's the subject of Wednesday's treatise. Stay tuned.
-=[ Grant ]=-
FRIDAY SURPRISE: A view to a thrill.
Friday, October 09, 2009 Filed in:
Friday
Surprise!, Completely
irrelevant
When I first started college, my ambition was to design optical systems for spy satellites. No, I'm not kidding, that's really what I wanted to do! That didn't work out, but I'm still fascinated with the idea of photographing the earth from space. I like seeing what familiar things look like from a very high vantage point, and you can't get higher than that!
Here's one, for example. Can you guess what/where this is?
The answer, along with a huge collection of other spectral composite Landsat 7 images.
-=[ Grant ]=-
A surprising amount of discord.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009 Filed in:
Self defense, Techniques &
Training
About a week ago, Breda wrote an interesting little piece on self defense. It's interesting to me because of the amount of conflict that the commenters managed to inject into the discussion. I believe that this is because of some fuzzy thinking in regards to the subject, and I'll have more to say in the coming days. (Need time to get the words from my brain through my fingers and into something that resembles coherent thought. Some days that's easier than others!)
In the meantime, read her post and the comments. Think: why do we train? Why should anyone?
-=[ Grant ]=-
Whooops!
Tuesday, October 06, 2009 Filed in:
My Life, Blog
stuff
Ever gotten out of bed, unsure of what day it is? That happens to everyone at some point or another, but when you're self employed it happens a lot.
To stay grounded, my habit is to check iCal every morning. It shows me what day it is and what I have to do that day. On Mondays, for example, it tells me that I have a blog post due. All is right with the world.
My system works wonderfully, unless I forget to check iCal while I'm eating my breakfast.
Like yesterday.
I went all day thinking it was Sunday, and that conviction persisted until late last night. It was only then I realized that I'd lost a whole working day!
I know it's Tuesday, but I'm hoping some of my readers don't. For you, this is Monday's post. For the rest, you just forgot to check in yesterday.
It's win-win for me!
-=[ Grant ]=-
Friday Extra: My ears are burning.
Tommy The Pharmacist sent me an email suggesting I check out the latest ProArms Podcast. (I'm a week behind on my listening schedule, despite being subscribed to their feed.) This week it's the "Revolver Roundtable", and it's great - have a listen.
(Oh, they do mention a certain revolversmith. Wonder who it might be??)
-=[ Grant ]=-
FRIDAY SURPRISE: Back to the future.
Well, at 110 baud, it's a slow trip!
This Teletype is identical to the one I used in high school to access a computer timeshare system. Back in the mid-'70s, practical personal computers were still a ways off, and even minicomputers (like the DEC PDP-11) were far too expensive for most high schools to purchase. The affordable way to computer power was to buy a subscription to time on a mainframe computer, and dial in on their telephone lines.
Our school was out in the boonies (no, seriously, we were) and we linked to a computer located in Portland (OR). I'm no longer sure of the system we used, but Burroughs is stuck in my mind.
We used the ASR-33 above to interact with the computer. The dial on the right was used to call one of the access numbers; if it was busy, we tried the next one. As I recall, we had three numbers on which we had access, and if all three of them were busy (other users of the service), we had to wait until a line was free. For those who have grown up never having used a rotary phone, there was no such thing as speed dial or automatic redial!
We could use the paper tape reader on the left of the machine to feed in a program, or to save a program from the computer's memory. At the blazing speed of 10 characters per second, it took a LONG time to feed in a program - sometimes 30 minutes or more. We had a couple of large filing cabinets full of paper tape rolls, programs that other students had written or ones which the company supplied to us.
The computer output was printed on the typewriter in the center of the console. It used a roll of paper that was about 8" wide, and in our case was a dull yellow color.
Yes, I'm old, but your turn is coming, kids - someday your children will be laughing at the idea of your beloved iPod!
More pics of the ASR-33
Wikipedia entry on the TeleType ASR-33
What is a TeleType, anyhow?
The history of TeleType
-=[ Grant ]=-