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Of Course They Are

Government Thugs

Fresh from the CanuckiReich:

On Friday, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) announced they are pairing with several federal intelligence agencies and other law enforcement divisions to launch “enhanced intelligence operations and investigations” that will target individuals who are participating in the Canadian Truckers For Freedom Convoy.
…
According to the OPS statement, the ‘enhanced investigation’ will begin targeting the key figures who are behind the organization of the convoy as part of the Canadian government’s “increased effort to identify and target protestors who are funding/supporting/enabling unlawful and harmful activity by protesters.”

Intelligence agencies will be assisting the OPS in gathering identifying information on targeted individuals, including financial records, digital history, vehicle registration, driver’s licenses, insurance status, and other personal data that can be used to criminally prosecute the convoy participants.

That’s bad.  This is worse:

US law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), will also assist with the crackdown by investigating “online threats that originated in the US,” despite little to no evidence or behavior that has indicated any violence is being planned.

Our local Alphabet Gestapo are no doubt using this as a training exercise for our own U.S. freedom convoys, when they occur.

As far as I can see, the only “unlawful and violent activities” being planned are those of the police.

Fuckers.  Theirs and ours.

Bad Influence

Gratuitous Gun Pics

Longtime Reader and Friend JohnC writes:

Well, you caused me to impulse buy a Ruger SP101… and I thank you for it! When you suggested one for my sister, I found some French Police trade-in guns for $450 chambered in .38 spl, which is fine, I’m not the type who enjoys shooting .357 magnums out of small guns–it’s like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer because it feels so good when your head stops hurting. Anyway, I have a nice new carry gun for use with plenty effective +P loads. So here is a post I put up at Ruger Forums, thought you’d appreciate it and the pics. Thanks for helping me make an impulse purchase!  I love this thing!

Oh, and the grips are made by now defunct Trausch, in Germany. Those are the grips they put on the Manurhin revolver you wrote about a while back. Atlantic Firearms still has some if this makes your trigger finger itch.

🙂

And an update:

Well, had it out to the range already. Love it! The trigger is not bad, but I do have the Wolff spring kit and plan on trying the 12# spring. If I like it, I’m not after the lightest pull and I’ll stop. If I feel like I should try the 10# it will take 300 rounds of practice ammo to get me confident in it, but I bet the 12# will do the trick. Other than reaming the trigger return spring channel, I’m not planning on doing all that Mcarbo polishing, I doubt it’s needed.

Love the gun, especially the grips, as has been mentioned. They are terrific! I did not have any issue with a speedloader at all with them. Very comfy little gun. I can see this is the .357 sized gun, the chambers are just reamed a bit shorter, it’s very obvious, so no measuring needed. I’m confident enough in the +P stuff, I’m not really interested in reaming it out to shoot .357 Magnum, I do that in my Security Six.

Finally, I got a Galco Combat master for it, and it’s a great holster. They usually have some kind of 15% off promo deal, and I got one. Yeah, I’ve had fancy one-man-shop holsters, but IMNSHO, you can find a cheaper holster than the Galco, and you can find a better holster than the Galco, but you can’t find a better holster for less money than a Galco. They are top quality products at reasonable, if not cheap prices.

Other than the spring replacement, the only other thing I plan on doing is easing the edges of the trigger and the trigger guard, they are a bit sharpish. Maybe I’ll polish it up like I did my little Taurus 85CH snubby, but not sure I have that much energy. We’ll see.

Here is a shot of what I took to the range yesterday.

I love a well-turned-out range session, myself.  Lovely.

Yeah, that’s me:  a Bad Influence.  As I recall, when John first came to this website, he only had one or two guns.  Since then, he’d accumulated well over a dozen — until that unfortunate canoeing accident, that is.

2D/3D

Deep Thoughts, Numbers & Statistics

From the Comments to yesterday’s post about the two- vs. three dimension concepts came this, from Reader Harry (no relation):

Vertical projects (buildings, towers) do have 3 dimensions. They are described as vertical projects, even though their height does not always exceed their length or width.
Horizontal projects (roads, airfields) also have 3 dimensions. They are described as horizontal projects, even though their length does not always exceed their height or width.

I understand that perfectly, especially when viewed in Platonic terms.  You may call a table a “quadripod eating-surface”, but that does not negate its “table-ness”, which exists outside any definition.

A road, almost by definition, needs no thickness — it is a line that connects a starting point and a destination, and thus requires no third dimension.  (This is not true in Britishland, however, where a road can start in the middle of nowhere, meander all over the countryside and then just expire — probably out of sheer exhaustion — never having reached an actual destination.  And one may still encounter traffic jams on said roads because while they are theoretically bi-directional, their width is usually less than that of a single car — thus proving the statement that a line may have length but not width.)

Because buildings have no ending point (projecting upwards into thin air), they must have a third dimension.  A wall cannot exist without thickness — even when joined to the ceiling.  (Just because you need only two of its dimensions when hanging a picture, for example, doesn’t mean it needn’t have a third, as a moment’s thought will show.)

And now I need to quit, because I’m starting to get a headache.

Priceless Scandi

Resistance

Oh yeah, baby…

Finland Anti-Lockdown Convoy Hits Helsinki

Helsinki saw dozens of motor vehicles clog its streets on Friday evening, sparked by the nation’s lockdown rules, as well as the rising cost of fuel in the country.

Police initially tried to stifle the protest before it occurred, implementing a ban on heavy goods vehicles — a class which includes a wide variety of trucks — without a permit from the city centre.

That’s excellent news.  But here’s my absolute favorite part:

However, according to a report from Finnish public broadcaster Yle Uutiset, this did not stop the protest from going ahead, with dozens of vehicles, including motor homes, cars, vans, and at least one mobile sauna, streaming into the city centre for the demonstration.

A mobile sauna?   The only way this shindig could have been more Finnish was if Mika Häkonnen had been part of the parade, riding a reindeer.

Bravo, ystäväni.

My Difficult Choices

Drive Time

…from yesterday’s post about driving around the Virginia International Raceway:

Group A:  2009 Wiesmann Roadster

Are you kidding me?  A German V10 in a custom-built luxury sports car?  Vroom, vroom.

Group B:  1995 Aston Martin DB7

Never driven an A-M… time to do so.

Group C:  1985 Lancia Delta S4

Better than the Stratos?  I’d need to judge for myself…

Group D: 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL
Not even close.  One of the best cars BMW ever made.

Group E:   1967 Iso Grifo 350 GL
American engine, Italian styling.  Also, not even close.

Group F: 1955 Fiat 8V Zagato
Let’s see:  four-time winner of the Euro Sports Car championship, a snarling 2-liter V8 engine… what was the question, again?

Next Sunday will feature yet another series of difficult choices.  I rather like this game.

Wait A Minute

Science!

So we have this breathless headline:

MIT scientists filed two patents on a new, 2D material that’s stronger than steel

Ummm… I always thought that two dimensions (length and width) mean that in mathematical and scientific terms the figure has no thickness — no matter how thin, the third dimension must exist for the figure to have substance — otherwise, it’s just a drawing.

And the explanation in the article doesn’t help:

“Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions,” said Strano, in the MIT blog post. “This mechanism happens spontaneously in solution, and after we synthesize the material, we can easily spin-coat thin films that are extraordinarily strong.”

It doesn’t matter if the third dimension (of the “thin film”) is only a trillionth of a micron thick, or the thickness of a molecule, it’s still >0.

Is this some kind of new math, or did somebody send out a memo redefining the dimensions?

I’m relying on a Reader Of Greater Brain than I to explain this to me.