Heading for the airport?

The World's Best Travel Blog explains why you should wash your hands even more carefully if you've been in the reloading shack before heading for the friendly skies.

Penis Pants

Things you learn from opening links on Facebook.

Travis McGee once remarked in a discussion of mortality something very close to, "Every year there is less to lose."

He was talking about pollution, I think, but certainly pollution is a term broad enough to cover knitted members and silken scrota, all proudly on public display.

Gun Porn, Courtesy of the Young Bill Ruger

If Bill Ruger were alive and running the show in Southport, this three-screw .22 would hold nothing but pleasant memories, including the time Dad shot it into the ground to scare off a bunch of thuggy teenagers who kept farting around in his back yard. (Bad procedure, of course, but it happened to work this time.)

And including the buddy I bought it from in about 1970, Mark Brown of Blackfoot, Idaho, a good friend and outstanding journalist who died way too young.

The good vibes stop with a decision to have the "safety" conversion installed and a factory refinish. The reblue was excellent, and a metal polisher in Connecticut is to be congratulated for outstanding restraint and attention to the owner requests.

After that the new Ruger company behaved in a way designed to send gun buyers running to another maker. Any other maker, probably. Not to put too fine a point on things, the damned revolver wouldn't shoot, even though a Ruger "technician" certified he had tested it and been pleased as punch with how well it worked.

Maybe gremlins invaded the shipping box and arranged things so the cylinder wouldn't lock, the hammer wouldn't reliably cock , and, sometimes, the entire set of innards would lock up. Email after email and two USPS letters went ignored until, months later, I was advised to return the gun "for evaluation."

A guy gets angry enough and does something he hates to do. He disassembles a single -action revolver and looks things over. Transfer bar actually broken, its selvage edge snaggable on the firing pin. Bolt burred. The fix on the shop bench took maybe 30 minutes. It taught a lesson: Retain the utmost respect for Bill Ruger, but never again trust the company which has passed into the hands of marketeers and cost accountants.

Now that it shoots, it's a lovely little thing, as is the western rig built for it by Janine Ann for Ottis Rollin.

Ah so, Toyada-san, Part Four

All will be shocked to learn I am among those who don't think congressional hearings fix things. But the one in Washington today is going to generate barrels of ink and eons of air time.

So it would be an good opportunity for someone to make the point: There comes a time when technology as applied to machinery meant for general public use becomes so complicated as to be self defeating.

No sane citizen is asking for an automobile which, avocationally, advises on investments and analyzes the theology of Niebuhr.

The issue at hand will be Toyota's gas pedal, excitable as a Celtic maiden and no more predictable by any logic yet confided to humankind.

So maybe someone could just note that by 1930 automobile engineers had perfected a fully observable, serviceable, and replaceable control loop for feeding fuel to an engine. A spring, a couple-three steel rods, and a sentient operator. Sticky accelerators could be cured with a couple of squirts from an oil can, and you hardly ever had to consult with Washington about it.