Sep 6, 2012

Softly, softly, cache monkey

The AP is carrying a rambling but interesting review of Asian monkeyshines. It concentrates on squabbles about which nations own which guano piles in the western Pacific.

It is refreshingly free of explanations that Hillary Rodham is there, on the job, and carrying solutions to Oriental angst such as the Korea-Japan spat over the Dokdo Islands. This strategic treasure in the Sea of Japan is about half-way between the disputants. It is made up of 46 acres of rock which, at last report, was home to a Korean octopus fisherman, his wife, and a handful of ROK cops.


"Korea and Japan have a bitter history  (says The Associated Press)   ...  Thumbing one's nose at Tokyo has long had substantial cache for millions of Koreans.

Uhh, look. A Rocky Mountain fur trapper hid his plews in a cache. A girl I knew in Yokosuka sometimes stuck a flower in her hair. That gave her a certain cachet.

I know. Spell-check is cheaper than an editor.

Shooting up the cow pasture

The new Remington 760 got its first workout as a Camp J resident yesterday.

As a matter of biology, I report that even a middlin' load of 125 grains at something like 2900 feet per second makes a guy wish for more padding than one layer of tee-shirt cotton; a .30-06 round from a seven and one-half-pound rifle is tolerable, but it gets your attention. (For comparison, a Garand weighs about ten pounds.)

We fired at 80 yards in K's pasture from an improvised shooting bench -- a log dressed with a Vietnam poncho liner and a horse blanket if you demand precise descriptions -- and produced groups just shy of respectable.  That is, a bit over two inches up to a lamentable four-plus.  Allow what you will for unfamiliarity and  a stiff and fluky crosswind.

Observations: The trigger is fair at best, gritty, creepy, and a bit heavy, even for a "hunting" rifle.  Working the action requires an authoritative attitude. If you wimp it, the extractor won't snap over the rim, and you'll lose your trophy terrorist because your rifle is out of battery. To be fair, it's a virtually new rifle, and more rounds might smooth things.

The early Redfield 3x9 reminds me of the difference between excellent optics and the mediocre Oriental crap on most of the scoped rifles around here. Suddenly, your right eye is 20 years old again. On the other hand, I wish it had click stops. I also wish the right-to-left adjustment actually moved the groups left.  Oh well, I'll view that as a challenge to my problem-solving skills.

Overall, it's an attractive woman of the kind you take to good restaurants. But you're reluctant to propose marriage.

I think I'll put it on the table at our small local show this weekend, just to see what it's worth as trading stock.The asking price will be exhorbitant as a sop to the  deeply held conviction that  it is always wrong to sell a gun.  









Sep 5, 2012

The bankers and politicians of Europe are as desperate as our own Ben Bernanke  and his assistant, Barrack Obama. The Germans, for instance,  just finished trying to sell  5 billion Euros in IOUs. Investors  left more than 1 billion worth  of them on the table.

(You'd think the Germans would be better at printing and peddling funny money, what with all their practice back in the good old Weimar frolic. But I digress.)

German money bosses say they'll try to sell the leftovers later, but it looks to me like the orphan Eurotoons could be destined for the "free"box at the garage sale.

Why not? They're like Bernanke bucks. Renewable biomass.



Paging Ed Newman

How 'bout that? You can buy a gizmo to charge your telephone with tiny little pieces of wood, but "wood" is not good enough for marketeers hustling the Bio-Lite.  They insist:

"Fuel (is)  Renewable biomass"

Elegance like that  shames me. For all these years of timber-felling and and maul-swinging, I've missed the opportunity to sound edgy and hip, aquiver with a passion for keeping Mother Earth all scrubbed up; virginal, you might say, although there's an oxymoron to overcome there.

So I reform and report Camp J is at present supplied with nearly three cords of renewable biomass for the wood renewable-biomass burner.

In fairness, the Bio-Lite copy writer does translate for  the benefit of English speakers, confiding to us that  "biomass"  is "(twigs, pine cones, wood pellets, etc.)"

The gadget costs a hundred-nine bucks, but that includes a thermally actuated electrical output to a USB connection for your mobile i-Whatsis.

If you can live without the "thermoelectric generator (TEG)" you can save about a hundred-twenty-nine  bucks with a No.10 can and a set of tin snips. Fueled with renewable biomass, it will boil up your Arbuckles just fine.

H/T to Tam who is hosting a funny discussion on the subject. Some want. Some are skeptical. To each his dag-nab, blue-eyed own.