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Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

From, of all places, Southern California:

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office said a home intruder armed with a shotgun died Friday night after being shot during an exchange of gunfire with a San Jacinto, California, homeowner.

Here’s the interesting part:

During the confrontation, the suspect fired multiple rounds at the homeowner. The homeowner returned fire, striking the suspect.  The homeowner was not wounded in the shootout but the alleged intruder was pronounced dead at the scene.

Well, so much for that “shotgun is better than a handgun” trope.  (I’m assuming that Our Hero was using a handgun because as usual, the press report is sadly lacking in important details.)  If my assumption is correct, then it drives home what I’ve been saying for years:  aimed, accurate fire beats spray ‘n pray, nine times out of ten.

Which reminds me:  it’s been weeks since I practiced with my bedside gun, so it’s time I remedied that situation.

So if you’ll excuse me…

Streaming

Education

I’m not talking about downloading movies or anything like that;  I’m talking about the practice of grouping schoolkids into classes according to their abilities — something which has been regarded as doubleplusungood by Big Education for a long time.

As always, Joanne Jacobs brings in da numbers:

“It wasn’t long ago that some educational researchers in the UK and Ireland were calling ability grouping ‘symbolic violence’.”

And yet…

Strong students learn less math in mixed classes, concludes a new Education Endowment Foundation study of English middle schools, reports Richard Adams in The Guardian. Weaker students, as judged by prior math achievement, do about the same whether they’re in mixed classes or lower-track classes, University College London (UCL) researchers found. Furthermore, students placed in lower-track classes were more confident of their math abilities than those in mixed classes.

I can attest to this.  Way back in time, we members of the chalk ‘n slate set were “streamed” in just about every class, from A to D where the numbers supported it (e.g. in Mathematics and English), and from A to C for the elective classes (such as Geography, Biology and History).

I remember starting at St. John’s College in the A class for every course, but by the end of my second year I was moved down to the B classes for Mathematics and Science (Chem and Physics, which were combined into a single discipline).  All the other courses, I remained in the A stream (English, Afrikaans and Latin — our French class was so small that streaming made no sense).

Once I’d got over the shame of being “dropped” — and withstood the anguish of my parents, who couldn’t believe that their “straight A” son was no more — I actually found those two courses less intimidating, because I didn’t have to work with the super-smart Maths and Science geniuses in the A class who regularly got 90%-100% for all their tests, whilst I was lucky to pass.

In the B classes, however, because the teaching was delivered at a much slower pace, I regularly passed all the tests, along the way discovering that my actual problem was that I had no facility for mathematical processing — ironic, really, considering that I ended up being a statistician and data analyst at the Great Big Research Company, and later as a data model algorithm developer as a consultant.

My problem was never getting the thing solved;  I just needed a lot more time than everyone else to get there.  So tests were always going to be difficult for me because of the limited time thereof.  (I proved this when I took the Core Math class at college, yeah in my fifties:  I could barely scrape through tests with a passing grade, but because the final exam was taken in a lab with no time constraints, I ended up with a final “B” grade — my only one in all the courses I took for my B.A. — because while my semester tests were a dismal failure, I actually scored 99% for my final exam, which luckily for me counted for 80% of the total.)

But I wouldn’t have been able to do even that, if my self-confidence hadn’t been bolstered in high school by being able to work at a slower pace in the B class.

So you can put me on the side of people who don’t think that ability grouping / streaming is symbolic violence.

Victory At Yorktown!

Self-Defense

Apparently, Gen. George Washington has just forced the English Army to surrend– oh, you knew that already?  Well, here’s some more of that kind of news:

Because Everyone Needs a Boot Knife
While EDC knives are certainly tools, I think anyone who carries a gun also acknowledges that they’re a backup weapon as well. Especially in a weapons retention situation. Even if you don’t carry a gun, if you carry a knife you’re probably cognizant of its defensive potential if needed. While there are a lot of knives out there that you can choose from, with a lot of good reasons why, let’s take a look at the humble boot knife.

I don’t know where he’s been living, but a boot knife is anything but “humble”.  I’ve been carrying one almost my entire adult life — whether the local constabulary had declared them “illegal” or not — and I loves it, oh yes I do.

Here it is (next to my 1911 for scale):


(Kershaw “Special Agent”)

Now I must confess that it’s not an everyday carry (EDC) thing for me, mostly because I don’t wear boots, cowboy or otherwise, every day.  And it’s a little too big and bulky to be worn on my belt — so I prefer to carry a decent folding pocket knife instead.

But if I’ve got the old Ariats on, you’d better believe that the Kershaw is clipped inside (the left boot, so that my right is free to wield the 1911, of course).

So of course everyone needs a boot knife.  I bet ol’ Cornwallis didn’t have one clipped to his boot.  Now I’m not saying that’s why he lost the battle, but it wouldn’t surprise me.