More Like This, Please

We need a great deal more of this:

Entering 2025, community colleges are expanding apprenticeships and other experienced-based learning programs to address America’s labor shortage crisis and meet a growing demand for alternative forms of higher education.

“Community colleges are going beyond their traditional role of instruction, helping to organize, register, and assist companies in running their apprenticeship programs,” John Colborn, executive director of Apprenticeships for America, told The College Fix.

“By expanding these services, they reduce barriers for employers to offer apprenticeships,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month.

A recent report by Colborn’s organization shows the number of community colleges with active apprenticeships has grown from just 30 to over 200 between 2016 and 2023.

I’d be happier if it was two thousand community colleges, but I’ll take what I can get.

Seriously:  considering how colleges’ traditional educational courses have been debased into (essentially) Marxist wokism, there is a profound rationale for colleges, especially community colleges, to start turning some of their classrooms into workshops.

And I don’t even want to hear that government (of any kind) needs to get involved in this initiative, for any reason.  No;  this belongs entirely in the purview of businesses who would benefit from having a ready pool of trained workers in their trades, as opposed to the usual escapees from the grease pit at JiffyLube, no-hoper high school “graduates” or illegal immigrants.

There are not many instances where I’d want to copy the Germans, on anything;  but I’ve always been a huge fan of their clinical observation — that not everyone should go to college, but an awful lot of the people left over would benefit greatly from trade schools — and it deserves comprehensive implementation on this side of The Pond.

Honestly, nobody loses in this operation;  not the workers, nor the companies and especially not the colleges who participate.

Having said that:  so beneficial an opportunity is bound to fail, because OMG every child is special and shouldn’t have to get their precious little hands soiled by working at Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs (or Victor Davis Hanson’s “Muscular Jobs”, if you prefer).

Fach.

Another Perspective

Last month I examined Christopher Rufo’s opinion on modern-day anarchism (although he calls it nihilism).  Now I see that Freddie de Boer has a slightly different take on the matter:

I argue that there is a certain treacherous animal spirit stalking around in the WEIRD world, particularly among the young, a yearning for deliverance… and if they have to, they’ll take deliverance through violence. Our culture has erased transcendent meaning and left in its place short-form internet video, frothy pop music, limitless pornography, Adderall for the educated and fentanyl for the not, a ceaseless parade of minor amusements that distract but never satisfy. And people want to be satisfied; they want something durable. They want something to hold on to. They want to transcend the ordinary. And I’m afraid that, with God dead and the romantic ideal ironized into annihilation, the pure thrill of violence is one of the only outlets left to express the inexpressible, and committing violent acts is free.

It is an excellent study, and I recommend it greatly.

And while I’ll leave the solution thereof to the psychologists and therapists, I’m suggesting that now — more than ever — is the time when one should always be armed, less some disaffected young asshole takes it in his head to experience the “thrill of violence” at a place where you happen to be.

It’s bad enough that we should be armed against random robbers not to mention those of the BLM/Antifa persuasion, but now there might be some dreamy anarchists to deal with as well…

Alarming Comparisons

Saw these SOTI:


…which made me ROFL.  That’s a good reason right there where one should strive for excellence over average, and I’m proud to say that I am — although I must say that several if not most of my Readers are probably more excellenter than I am, if you get my drift.

The second thing, though, is somewhat more alarming:

I mean, WTF?  We Texans are beaten by those rednecks I mean our fine neighbors in Oklahoma and Louisiana?  Like Orwell’s Snowball, we Texans will just have to Try Harder, and although I would like to Do My Bit, I’m only one Pore Ole Man…

I would be embarrassed by the folks in Montana and Wyoming, except that only about fifty people live there in total so the sample skews the average.

And it must be said, speaking of rednecks and hillbillies, that I am mightily impressed by the good people of West Virginia.

And on a branch line in my train of thought, I wouldn’t mind one of these, in .357 Magnum:


…or, if I don’t want to be too show-offy:


…because that case-hardened receiver is just too purty for words.

Then again, the brass Henry Golden Boy is made in Murka, while the Cimarron isn’t.

And lastly:  that Citadel thing is just too fugly for words.


…I mean, I know that to sell anything these days to the Operator 5.11 crowd you have to make it all tactical ‘n stuff, but seriously?

Tangential Redheads

Loyal Reader Mike S. writes and confesses that like me, he is a worshipper of les cheveux roux, and wonders if I would feature two of his current obsessions of that ilk, both being Irish actresses playing on BritTV soaps.

And why not, say I.  Here’s young Ellie Lavery of Hope Street:

Lessee… pale skin, freckled boobies and firecracker fuzz?  Yummy.

And then there is Niamh (pronounced Nee-Evv*) McGrady from Holby City:

All the above attributes, in a MILFy package.  Double yummy.


*No, I don’t understand Irish spelling / pronunciation either.

“Dear Federal Ammunition”

To whom it may concern:

re:  This stuff

Contrary to what it says on the box, this “target grade performance” .22 ammo, supposedly “ideal for semi-auto” actually isn’t any of those things, as I discovered at my favorite (indoor) range yesterday.

Out of the 325 rounds contained in said box, I experienced no fewer than 28 failures to fire (FTF) — all, it should be said, did fire the second time around — and to be frank, the “target grade” accuracy wasn’t anything to write home about, either (more on that in a bit).

Now I know what comes next:  “Your rifle isn’t working properly!  Check the firing pin!”

Ahem.  I fired 100 rounds through each of the following (same range session, btw):

By rifle (top to bottom):

Taurus Mod 63 (Winchester ’63 clone):  7 FTF
Marlin Mod 60:  8 FTF
Ruger 10/22:  9 FTF

All three were meticulously maintained and cleaned, all are either fresh out of the box or nearly so, and none has had more than 100-odd rounds fired through them.  Sorry, but a 7-9% failure rate in ammo which is supposedly “target grade” sucks dick worse than Madonna on her last Saturday night drunken pub crawl.  Honestly, I get better results from the awful Remington Gold 500-round bulk ammo.

And by the way, all the rounds fed flawlessly, whether through a tube mag or the 10/22 magazine — the rifles, in other words, were without fault.

Now for that accuracy thing.

I will frankly admit that my old eyes do not engender the best accuracy in the world with iron sights, but I’ll also suggest that a 2.5″ (best) grouping at 20 yards is not really acceptable off the bench — at least, not to me it isn’t.

So I fired off the last 25 rounds (4 FTF, FFS) through something a little more accurate — a rifle which usually gets sub-1″ groups at the same distance.  Here’s a full picture of the rifles I took to the range:

I would humbly suggest that in my shaking old hands, that Marlin 880SQ (top) is as good as any “target” rifle for the price, and better than just about any other of that type that I’ve fired before.

The result:  1.75″ (best 5-round grouping of the five strings, the others were over 2″).  So I popped off five rounds of its usual feed (CCI MiniMag 40gr), and got a 0.72″ group with a called marginal “flier” — excluding that, it was a 0.5″ single hole.  Now that’s what I call “target grade” performance.

You guys need to step up your game.  And fix your frigging priming compound.