The Proper Response

Watching this whole social justice brouhaha, where a man can be accused of all manner of evil with no evidence whatsoever, and frankly, it makes me a little disconcerted.  No evidence, baseless accusations, it's this sort of thing that would make a District Attorney throw the whole case out. 

Chuck Grassley has to have a hearing, I suppose, if only to put the lie to this nonsense.  Hopefully, by week's end, the judge will be confirmed, and the Democrats will be crying in their beer. 

Still, I wonder what a good, honest, strong Southern gal would do with something like this, and I"m pretty sure how Belle would handle it.  Belle doesn't tolerate much foolishness, especially when a member of her family is involved.  We'll close the curtain on that, and turn to America's Sweetheart, Busty Ross 

Thanks, Stilton, I needed that.

Leadership Matters

Leadership matters.  In the military, in civil politics, in corporate life,  it's all about leadership.

In natural disasters, leadership is especially important.  Getting the electricity turned on, getting the stores re-stocked, and getting people back to work.  That takes leadership.  One recurring success story is the ability of Waffle House to be up and running as soon as possible, to feed people who are hungry, and to restore a sense of normalcy to a situation that is decidedly not normal.    That's leadership.

The CEO of all Waffle House is IN Wilmington. All 5 are open and he has been personally serving 1st responders & thousands of customers. That is how leadership works! Can your boss do your job and would he/she be willing to do it? Let's all eat there soon! 

They've brought in generators to restore service to the stores, they've gotten the people back to work, and they're serving customers and first responders who might not have a hot meal available.   Trust me when I say that in a natural disaster, when the power is out and you're working to help people who desperately need help, it's comforting to know that a hot meal is available.  That Waffle House is able to get up-and-running so quickly is a testament to the quality of the leadership of the organization. 

Science

Reproductive hormones related to how attractive a woman smells.  Imagine that!

Researchers at the University of Bern demonstrate that some women smell better to men than others—namely those who are "fittest" for reproduction.

So, there is a difference between men and women, and gender does matter.  Imagine that.    I would also speculate that perfumes or other  artificial scents are designed  to level the playing field.

Good Luck With That

You gotta love the flat-earth folks.  If nothing else, they provide us with endless mirth.

“Mad” Mike Hughes is a bit of a conundrum. The 61-year-old doesn’t believe in science, but he plans to launch himself over a ghost town Saturday in a self-made rocket that he built over the last few years, spending over $20,000. He plans to one day create another rocket that can leave earth’s atmosphere so he can prove that the earth is flat.

He doesn't believe in science, but he's going to launch a rocket.  To prove that the earth is flat.  Good luck with that.

But, he's willing to put his money where his mouth is, and he's willing to entertain us in the meantime.  I wonder what he's going to do when he gets high enough and sees the curvature of the earth?

Progress

For the vast majority of the human experience, the workday was measured by the sun.   For the most part, artificial light was limited to burning oil, whether vegetable or mineral.   Whether the lamps that Jesus used, or the kerosene lights and candles that lit the evenings of the pioneers of our more recent past, artificial light was important.  Then, in the late 1800s, the electric light bulbs were invented, and human progress took a dramatic leap forward.  The electric revolution of the late 19th century made a huge difference in human life and spawned continuing progress that continues today.  Even this computer I use to communicate my philosophy on life can be traced directly to that simple invention.

I remember a conversation between my father and my sister.  She came into the kitchen holding an open textbook and asked, "How do light bulbs work?"

Dad made his living as a telephone man.  His working career spanned that time from rotary dial phones and twisted pair cable, through electronic switching, microwave technology and fiber optics.  He looked at the light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and pronounced.  "Battery on one side, ground on the other."

"Okay," my sister asked.  "So how does the television work?"

Dad chuckled.  "Basically, battery on one side, ground on the other."

The point is that artificial, electric light spawned a transformation of human endeavor.  And, for some progressives, that's a problem.  A recent NPR article says it's a problem.

Earth Is Lit, And That's A Problem

That's the title of the article.  Click on the link, but they're serious.  The earth is too bright.  They're worried about light pollution.  Seriously.

The rapid increase in night lighting has been a profound change, a kind of global experiment, that has happened in just the last 100 years. "My mum, for example, grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, in a time before they had electrification," Kyba says. "So she grew up with an amazing starry sky, and now she lives, within one lifetime, under a very light-polluted sky."

This is called progress, something that progressives are adamantly against.  Much the irony.  Progressives won't he happy until humans descend into darkness, barely clinging to life.  For myself, than you, I'll put up with a little light pollution.

How Floods Work

A great piece here on how floods work.    It's about upstream, downstream and development.    Go read the whole thing for a full explanation, but I'll excerpt some of it.

Texas can be divided into roughly three major drainage areas. Those places that eventually flow into the Rio Grande, those that feed into the Brazos and Trinity, and those that supply the Red. Many of those streams drain south and east into the plains around what is now Houston – Port Arthur.

This is a huge file.  Click for larger.

Major cities are normally built near ports.  Houston is no exception.

So Houston was developed on wetlands, or specifically on higher areas within wetlands and streams called bayous. Buffalo Bayou is one of the best known, but there are scads of them, or were. Houston also sits on sediment that is slowly sliding down into the Gulf of Mexico and has been since the end of the last ice age. To compound the problem, in the ’50s and ’60s, groundwater pumping was tried to augment Houston and some of the surrounding towns’ water supplies, and that lowered a few areas almost below sea level before pumping stopped.

We all know that grass, trees and open spaces absorb rain.  Conversely, buildings, parking lots and  roads to not absorb rain.  That rain has to go somewhere and that's what we call "drainage".

Buildings, parking lots, and streets do not absorb rain. So the water must be directed somewhere, through storm sewers usually, and sent away. To make a long story really short and simple, a lot of urban areas have so much pavement (impermeable surface) as compared to absorbent ground that hard, fast rainfall causes street flooding. Denver, Amarillo, Garden City in KS, LA, anywhere you get a lot of rain in a short period of time can have minor flooding.

Major cities tend to grow, and developers like to build on flat areas.  Houses, roads, shopping malls, all contribute to moving water.  When all the bayous, creeks, and sloughs fill up, the water quits moving.  And, the folks upstream start seeing their water quit moving.    Which contributes to flooding in places that don't normally see flooding.    When you have a catastrophic storm like Harvey, or Katrina, or Sandy, we see flooding in areas that didn't flood 50 years ago.

The problem with Houston and the surrounding area is that over the past 150 years or so, more and more has been built on the bayous and wetlands along the Texas Gulf Coast, and upstream. So not only has there been far too much rainfall for the ground to absorb (30″ in 36 hours is too much even on absorbent ground), but it is falling upstream and filling the rivers that drain into the lower areas. And the development in that part of the state has covered over the soil and streams, reducing the amount of vegetation, and so it flooded

Go read the whole thing, It's worth the time,  

Tired, Just Tired

I'm working on about six hours sleep last night.  While that used to plenty when I was younger, today my butt is dragging.  Fortunately, I get to leave here at a reasonable hour today.

I feel a lot like that dog looks.

Old Time Repair Shops

When I was growing up, television was relatively new, and was a substantial investment, a fair portion of a weekly paycheck.  TV repair shops littered the landscape.  Indeed, my own father fixed TVs for a while in the family storeroom.  He put up a bench and made a little side money fixing television sets.

Those old repair shops have gone the way of the dodo bird.  Foe rhe most part, consumer electronics are disposable; if something breaks, you throw it away and buy another.  The time of fixing TVs is long gone.  But, there are still a couple of old-time repair shops around that can do stuff that was once the province of any good electronic repair shop.

One such repairman is a guy I'll call Ricky.  Ricky runs a repair shop that specializes in audio=visual equipment for a local governmental agency.  When I have an issue, Ricky is the easy answer.  He doesn't always tell me what I want to hear, but he'll give me the straight scoop.  Ricky likes old guns, so we trade expertise and talk about the time when things got fixed, rather than thrown away.

You'll remember earlier this week, when I bought my portable PA system.  I showed it to RIcky, and he noticed the two plugs on the back of the unit for attaching it to a battery for 12 volt power.  He told me about a shop downtown that sold little electronic parts.  "Go there and get two banana plugs and two battery clips.  Come back here and we'll build a power cord so that you can hook it to a battery."

So, I went to this shop he told me about.  Stepping in through the door was like stepping back 40 years. Dusty, musty, lots of shelves and bins.  I found the proprietor and told him what I was looking for.  "Ricky sent me."

"Okay", he said and started looking in bins.  In just a few minutes he had found banana plugs, one red, one black, but he was having trouble finding battery clips.  Then he remembered that he was using them as clamps for a gluing project.  He disappeared into the back of the shop and returned in just a minute, with two battery clips, one red, one black.  I gave him a $10.00 bill and out the door.

At Ricky's shop the next morning, Ricky plugged in his soldering iron and let it heat while he found a piece os suitable scrap wire.  In ten mites, he had soldered the banana plugs on one end and the battery clips on the other.  In the space of an couple of hours, I had a custom made, professionally crafted power cable for my PA system.

I didn't have to wait on Amazon, or go to a box store wondering if I could find what I needed, just talk to two old craftsmen who knew their business.  In many ways it was like stepping back into my grandfather's shop, or my Dad's shop.  When we lose these guys, either trhough the economy, or normal mortality, the country will have lost a treasure.

Remember The Alamo

About the time of this post, 5:00 a.m., Santa Anna was preparing to step off against about 200 Texian patriots in a little fortification outside of San Antonio.

By 6:30, a.m., the battle was over and the defenders of the Alamo were thrust into eternity.

This, of course, led to a series of events that culminated in the capture of Santa Anna by Texas forces at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.  Texas independence followed soon after.

Thomas Sowell Retiring

Professor Thomas Sowell is retiring.  That may not be news to some of you, but the good doctor is perhaps one of the smartest men I've ever had the pleasure of following.  He's an economist by training, but his political wit, and insight into the human condition have educated and amused me for several decades.

I started reading his columns in the early '90s, probably about the time that he started writing them.  Every time I'd see his byline I'd stop what I was doing and read the column.  It wasn't until several years later that I learned he was an economist, and a year or so after that I learned he is a black man.  Not that it mattered.  Like most of the country, I had moved past the idea that race mattered.

When I was in college, back in the '70s, and in graduate school in the '80s, I studied economics as part of my curriculum.  A professor once told me that if I wanted to understand the human condition, to study economics.  It's a hard science (with lots of math) that tries to explain why people act the way that we do.  That's good advice, and Dr. Sowell's columns try to explain the human condition.

Here's a small sampling of his better quotes.

1. "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."

2. "Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."

3. "Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good."

4. "Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."

5. "Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God."

6. "The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is: he confuses it with feeling."

7. "Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on 'income distribution,' the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned."

8. "Going back a hundred years, when blacks were just one generation out of slavery, we find that the census data of that era showed that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults."

9. "The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state."

10. "The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites."

11. "I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money."

12. "Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?"

13. "No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems — of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind."

14. "Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management."

And, as it turns out, Dr. Sowell also has had his fill of meetings.   "People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything."

Thank you, Dr. Sowell.  I hope that you enjoy your retirement.  You have touched far more people than you will ever know.

Iron Age Beer

Turning away from the frustrating political scene, we see this interesting article where archaeologists have unearthed a grave site containing beer.

A team of researchers worked with a brewery in Milwaukee to recreate an ancient beer from remnants of the alcoholic beverage that were found at an Iron Age burial site in Germany, reported Milwaukee Public Radio (WUWM). Though the acidic soil had dissolved the skeleton, archaeologists found metal weapons and a cauldron at the burial site.

 The cauldron, which dates back to between 400 B.C. to 450 B.C., was full of an ancient mead when it was buried, according to study leader Bettina Arnold, an archaeologist and anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

The scientists analyzed the cauldron and found that it held mead.  Through their analysis and working with brewers (this is Milwaukee, after all) established a recipe to recreate the brew. Beer, of course, is one of the oldest lubricants of our civilization, stretching across cultures and centuries to advance human civilization.  I can't recall one serious ancient society that hadn't learned to brew beer.

While I don't drink beer as much as I used to, I celebrate beer for it's salubrious nature, its contribution to civilization, and its adaptation to various cultures.  Beer exists because God loves us, and wants us to be happy in His creation.



Indeed, Tuck, indeed.

Bob Hoover - RIP

The aviation world lost a giant today.  Bob Hoover passed away at age 94.

I never knew him, but I knew of him.  A legendary pilot, he flew during and after World War II.  From his wiki page.

During World War II, Hoover was sent to Casablanca where his first major assignment was test flying the assembled aircraft ready for service. He was later assigned to the Spitfire-equipped 52d Fighter Group in Sicily. In 1944, on his 59th mission, his malfunctioning Mark V Spitfire was shot down by a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 off the coast of Southern France and he was taken prisoner. He spent 16 months at the German prison camp Stalag Luft 1 in Barth, Germany.

 Hoover managed to escape from the prison camp by stealing a Fw 190, and flew to safety in the Netherlands.

He stole a plane from the Jerrys and flew it to a safe runway.  Proably laughing his ass off the whole time.

Where do we find men like that?

I Feel A Storm Brewing

You know that feeling that some of us get in our joints before a weather change?  That uneasy, totally non-scientific, feeling that some folks get before a storm?  Yeah, that one.  I'm feeling something, not in the weather above my head, but in the politics of this nation.  There's a storm a'brewing.

Hillary is supposed to complain about the hacks to her emails.  (The irony is strong in this one.)  She thinks that there is some conspiracy between Donald Trump and Vlad Putin to sink her campaign.

Some of the more vocal Trump supporters have lost all faith in the system we use.  A tiny minority is even suggesting a coup if Hillary is elected. To be fair, Trump himself has decried the call for violence after the election.

Americans on both sides are losing faith in the way we elect a president.

It doesn't help that this is the weirdest election season I've ever seen or followed.  The Republican candidate is a loose cannon.  The Democratic nominee is demonstrably criminal.  They're both bad for America, but in starkly different ways.  We're going through a national revulsion on a huge scale.

The Obama presidency has been horrible for America, unless you are one of the political or corpoarte elite, you're probably worse off than you were eight years ago.  His legacy is a shambles, a list of failure on both the domestic side and the foreign side.  Racial relations have slid back forty years, and those of us who remember the race riots of the '60s are forced to re-live them.

For the first time in my lifetime, I don't trust the Supreme Court.  Regular readers know my contempt for Justice Roberts.  Both the IRS nd the FBI have been weaponized to serve the current political masters.  In the past eight years we've made some progress in expanding freedom, but in many ways, freedom has been constricted as well.  New regulations are strangling small business and the overall strength of the government has grown to the point where many find it better to close their doors than continue to provide services that Americans need.

The divide between rural and urban Americans is growing.

America needs a reset, and it needs it quickly.  This election may be a tipping point.  I pray that it is decided at the voting booth.  I also pray that whatever the outcome, the winner is mindful that fully half the electorate is against him or her and that the loser is magnanimous enough to go quietly away.

America needs a unifying president, and I don't see either one of these nominees as capable of unifying the country.

Friday Notes

1. The Chicago Tribune has endorsed Libertarian Gary Johnson for president.  Chicago is, of course, President Obama's home town.  They say that:

We would rather recommend a principled candidate for president — regardless of his or her prospects for victory — than suggest that voters cast ballots for such disappointing major-party candidates.

2. This clown bullshit is getting out of hand.

3.  The dawg is at the groomers this morning.  He looked like a sasquatch, so we made the appointment.  Hopefully, by this afternoon, he'll be trimmed and I'll know which end to scratch.

4.  All of my fast-draw brethren are in Fallon, Nevada this week, shooting in the Fastest Gun Alive competition.  I've been busing Facebook, trying to keep track, but it appears that they shot the category matches yesterday.  Two shooters much beloved in this area won category matches.  Gentleman George took 1st place in the Men's Super Senior category, and Texas Rose took 1st place in Women's Traditional.

4.  Milady and I have been invited to her brother's house across town this evening to eat chicken wings.  He's a pretty good wing cook, and I am not going to wear a white shirt.

5.  It looks like the deceased are registering to vote in Virginia.  This must be some more of that voter fraud that we hear never happens.  I wonder which party they registered for?

6.  Hey, Donald!  Keep your eye on the ball.  No one gives a crap about some nobody's non-existent sex tape.

Hypocrisy Reeks

The Moonbats continue to scream about evil oil, and the hypocrisy is staggering.  Our latest example comes from The Guardian, in an article entitled "No fracking, drilling or digging: it’s the only way to save life on Earth".  The author, George Monbiot, tries to make the case.

All this nonsense is a substitute for a simple proposition: stop digging. There is only one form of carbon capture and storage that is scientifically proven, and which can be deployed immediately: leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

He says all this, of course, while using electricity powered by fossil fuels, typing on a keyboard made of the byproducts of fossil fuels, driving to work in a vehicle powered by fossil fuels, probably even the shirt he's wearing comes in some form from fossil fuels.

Yet, he wants us to give all this up, but shows a decided lack of leadership by using all those things in his modern life. And, in my experience, that's the case with most environmentalists.  They want us to give up all these things, while using each and every one of those things to advance an agenda.

George is concerned about life on earth, yet fails to realize that the next mass extinction event will probably be like the last one.  A huge meteor falling on us that we can do nothing about, won't see coming, and will be on us before we can even panic.

In short, George reveals his ignorance, and his hypocrisy reeks.

You first, George.  Give up everything that comes from fossil fuels, and then we'll talk about it.

Have Y'all Noticed??

Only in America can a back--up quarterback get paid $19 million a year and claim that America is racist.  Amazing.

There is supposed to be a debate scheduled between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, moderated by Matt Lauer.  They're going to talk about implications of military strategy.  What do any of those three know about military strategy?

The Donald, a career businessman, deal-maker, billionaire, and corporate entrepreneur is now the champion of the underdog working class, and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, is beholden to big money and Wall Street.  This is a strange world we live in.

Glenn links to some interesting stuff about the Middle East.  With American influence waning there, Obama knows that the region can only be ruled with an iron fist, be and America can't rule with an iron fist, so he's letting the Chinese and Russians expand their influence there.  In the past, the oil would have been an issue, but with fracking, oil isn't an issue anymore.  Brilliant!

In other news, it's Friday, and I plan to stop on the way home this afternoon at my favorite butcher shop and get some fine ribeye steaks.  Let's get this weekend started.

Second Amendment as Muskets

A US congressman, Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.C.) used a tired, old trope that seems to limit the US Constitution to the technology available at the time of the Founders.

“This is something as a non-lawyer that I have had trouble with from the very beginning. When the framers of our Constitution considered the Second Amendment, they were talking about muskets,” Coleman said during a news conference outside of the Capitol Building on Tuesday.

Representative Coleman is being disingenuous, and for the sake of her constituents, I hope that she's not as stupid as she sounds.  The Founders were fairly intelligent men, and they knew that technology would move forward.  Indeed, they had seen great strides during their lifetimes, and they knew that every advance made would spur other advances, in mechanics, in agriculture, in every facet of human endeavor.  Ben Franklin himself was experimenting with electricity.

The press that the Founders talked about was Franklin's press.  The speech the Founders talked about was the limit of the human voice.  The religion that the Founders talked about was Christianity.

 If we take Coleman's argument to its logical conclusion, there would be no internet, no electronic communication, no religion except Christianity in the US.  There would also be no female representatives in Congress.  Persons who seek to limit freedom to a specific time period should be very careful which time period they pick.

Representative Coleman would limit technology to a specific time period, relative to human endeavor.  I call on her to limit her office to the technology at the time of the Founders.  No electric lights, no copy machine, yet no telephones, nor even a ball-point pen.  Air conditioning? Perish that though, it wasn't invented until the beginning of the 20th Century.  The Founders certainly never envisioned that technology.

Otherwise, she's simply a self-serving hypocrite.

Let's Talk About ARs

There is lots of bad information going around about the ever-demonized AR15, which I like to call America's Rifle.  I was reading an article today in Rolling Stone, which purports to tell us everything we need to know about the AR15 and the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that sunseted in 2004.  Lots of liberal talking points there, but those of us who know our business can call bullshit on most of it.

Before we begin, you might recall that Rolling Stone magazine is the same magazine that published the infamous article about the UVA rape case back in 2014.  Thoroughly discredited from opening paragraph to ending paragraph, that particular article is upheld as a testament to journalistic malpractice.  Anyone who considers Rolling Stone serious journalism is either demented or confused, so we'll consider the source here.

This one paragraph in the newer article I was reading caught my eye.  Let's take it apart, piece by piece, shall we?

Semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 were, at one time, banned nationwide. The 1994 federal assault weapons ban prohibited most versions of the rifle from being sold in the U.S. The gun re-entered circulation after Congress allowed the ban to expire in 2004. Subsequent efforts to renew the ban, or create other legislation that would limit assault weapons, have been unsuccessful.

Funny thing about the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban. I didn't find that it banned many guns, and it certainly didn't ban America's Rifle.  I know that because I bought one, perfectly legally, in 2003.  I remember it plainly.  In February, 2003 I was working in the jail on the evening that two good police officers were killed in Alexandria, LA.  It was an horrific event that rocked the community, and I don't want to dwell on it except to reinforce my timeline.

In April, 2003, I learned that I would be going to training for a new assignment.  Out of the jail, on the street, working with our most vulnerable citizens.  If I needed help, it would be coming, but I'd be on my own for several minutes.  I decided that I needed to give myself, and the citizens under my charge, the best opportunity to survive those several minutes.

So, shortly after I got my paycheck, probably about May 1, 2003 I went down to the local gun shop (in blue jeans and tennis shoes) and bought myself an AR-15.  I simply walked up the counter in my jeans and told the guy to bring me a new-in-box Bushmaster.  I filled out the form, passed the background check, and walked away with my rifle under my arm.  This was during the Assault Weapons Ban.  In 2003.  Before the law sunseted in 2004.  Let's see if we can find it?

Yep, that's it, a Bushmaster XM15E2S, bought totally legally during the ban.  Another blogger of some note, Tam, has noticed the same thing.  As she says:

And what I have is a tiny fraction of an electron in one atom in a water molecule of a drop in the civilian-owned AR15 bucket. Conservative estimates have the number of these things in circulation as closer to ten million than five. The horse is well and truly out of the barn.

Tam's right.  The horse is well and truly out of the barn.  Liberal media, and liberal politicians will try to placate us and offer platitudes to make us feel better.   The simple fact is that the Assault Weapons ban did nothing.  The AR-15 is America's Rifle.  The vast majority of them in civilian hands are not registered, because in the vast majority of jurisdictions in the US, there is no gun registration scheme.

Anyone that tells you that America's Rifle was banned from 994 to 2004 is obviously in denial, confused, or lying to you, as I've easily shown here.  AR-15s were bought, sold, and traded legally during that entire time.  The law didn't amount to a bucket of warm spit, but it made the anti-gunners feel good.  Which is why it was allowed to expire in 2004.

Oh, and that AR-15 used in the Orlando shooting?  It wan't.

Great Video

I was clicking around the Book of Face ad came to this little video by Pantaeo Productions, where Dave Spaulding talks about the current state of combatives training int he US.

What's interesting, is that he's echoing things that I've been saying for years.  The gun doesn't really matter, the trousers certainly don't matter, the brand of boots, or holster, or anything else doesn't matter as long as your equipment choices work for you.  What really matters is mindset.



If you've read much Cooper, or much PawPaw, we'll tell you that mindset is the key to surviving a lethal encounter.  Mindset matters.  Not what you're wearing, or whether you have a beard.

Stolen from Angel

I stole this picture from Angel.  It reminds me of a conversation I had several years ago.

I was standing on a corner, in uniform, watching some crowd disperse after an event.  Some dude approached me and asked if I supported LGBT.

"Sure do," I told him.  "Best damn sandwich I ever had."

He looked at me funny, so I continued.  "First ate one in Vah Horn, TX.  It was a sandwich with lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato.  I still remember how good that sandwich was."

He wandered off, muttering to himself.  I still think it's a great sandwich.