Why are they still wearing badges and carrying guns?

 

A gentleman (?) named Jamarcus Oneal Spates was arrested by a gaggle of Houston police officers on Monday.  It's not clear why so many of the officers were involved, or why they took such extreme precautions, but be that as it may . . .

On-duty uniformed officers arrived and attempted to stop the vehicle with Spates inside, the release states. HPD alleges Spates refused several commands to exit the vehicle.

The responding officers said they shot at Spates after they attempted to move toward the vehicle and saw him open the driver's door of the vehicle and extend his arm "in a shooting position," according to HPD's account. A bullet "grazed" Spates, the release said.

There's more at the link.

A bullet "grazed" Spates.  One bullet.  ONE SINGLE BULLET.

How many rounds were fired by all those officers to obtain just one slight, non-disabling injury to the suspect?  See (and hear) for yourself.

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?????

All those bullets flying around, and the suspect was grazed by just one of them.  Where, pray tell, did the rest of the bullets go?  How many nearby buildings, vehicles, trees, etc. were struck as well?  Oh - and what about innocent bystanders?

That's just about the most sickeningly incompetent firearms handling I've ever seen from uniformed cops.  I've no idea how many rounds were fired in all, but I won't be surprised to hear it was a hundred or more . . . AND ONLY ONE STRUCK ITS TARGET, AND EVEN THEN, ONLY JUST!!!

What's the point of issuing firearms to police at all, if that's the way they're going to handle them in a crisis situation?

No handgun bullet is a very good fight-stopper compared to a rifle or shotgun.  We know this.  It's been common knowledge for years.  However, even a handgun will stop a fight quickly enough if a bullet hits the target's central nervous system - i.e. the brain or the spine.  A penetration of the heart and/or circulatory system will take a bit longer - up to 30-60 seconds for the suspect to "bleed out".  However, if all the bullet does is "graze" the suspect's arm, it's not going to do one single damned thing to stop him.  It may make him lose his temper, but that's about all.

(As the late, great Jeff Cooper used to say about the [infamously puny] .25 ACP round:  "Carry a 25 if it makes you feel good, but do not ever load it. If you load it you may shoot it. If you shoot it you may hit somebody, and if you hit somebody, and he finds out about it, he may be very angry with you."  Considering the lack of success of those police officers, armed with [comparatively much more powerful] 9mm handguns, shotguns and at least one AR-15 rifle, they may as well have been carrying .25 ACP pistols instead!)

I'd take away the badges of the whole lot of them, and send them all for remedial firearms training.  I'd refuse to re-issue their badges unless and until they passed a truly practical, useful firearms test, such as the qualification for a basic handgun certificate from Gunsite or Thunder Ranch or equivalent shooting schools.  Can't do that?  Then you can't carry a gun to defend the public, because you're more of a danger to them than you are to the criminal!

Sheesh . . .

Peter

Animals and aircraft: a sometimes dubious mixture

 

Courtesy of an e-mail from Eaton Rapids Joe, I was led to this account of a massive pig airlift operation.

Business pard's son flies 747's for Atlas Air. Latest load was around 900 pigs from Cincinnati, stop over in Anchorage. A reverse thruster had stuck, so they had to transfer those pigs to another 747. I figure the big plane can haul around 4 double decker, 18 wheeler (pot) loads of pigs. That's a pot load max of around 50K pounds or so, times 4, still under a 747 max load of 250-300K pounds. They were able to open the 747 nose and side doors to give those pigs some air while the new plane was being readied.

I googled Philippine pig problem and found out they have African Swine Fever Virus, which is contagious and deadly. So the govt is importing 32,000 breeding age pigs from USA and Europe, placing them in ASFV free areas. That virus kills pigs, but does not infect humans. Don't ya know those big planes stank after hauling all those pigs. Bud said the pigs were stomping, were actually shaking the plane. Big plane, but lots of stomping pigs. (Stomping, mad pigs.... would make a great Antifa demonstration).

. . .

Wonder what a "pig ticket" for a half the way around the world trip would cost. And times 900.... And ultimately 32,000 pigs.... Only a govt could afford that, for sure not pig farmers.

There's more at the link, particularly comments from other interested readers.  My favorite:  "Ha! In the Philippines they'll offload 900 pigs and haul them off on three motorbikes, two garongs and a jeepney."  Friends who've been there assure me that's more likely than not . . .

The story reminded me of one of the more "interesting" freight problems involved in flying the Hump, the air transportation of men, machines and equipment from India to China during the Second World War.  I wrote about it at some length several years ago.  One of the most difficult tasks was to fly mules and donkeys to China for use as pack animals, which were essential in the heavily forested terrain of Burma and nearby areas.  The Hump loadmasters would cram anything up to a dozen into C-46 or C-47 transports, and fly them all the way to China.  The trouble was, their urine would seep through the aluminum floor plates and corrode the control cables that ran from the cockpit to the tail.  The problem was discovered one day when a C-47 pilot taxied out to the runway in China, to take off for a return flight to India, and discovered that the rudder would no longer answer to his control inputs.  Subsequent inspection revealed that all the planes used for those animal cargoes were in just as parlous a condition, requiring major overhauls and the replacement of many control cables and surfaces before they could go back to work.

Of course, domesticated (or semi-domesticated) livestock is manageable as cargo.  Wild animals . . . not so much.  One of my favorite episodes was Operation Crocodile in South Africa in 1970.  Conservationist Ian Player was trying to rescue a number of Nile crocodiles from an estuary threatened by severe drought.  He appealed to the South African Air Force, which made available one of its then-new Super Frelon helicopters.

Hilarity - and a great deal of bad language - ensued.  The game rangers and their assistants had to capture, then immobilize the crocodiles, one after another, and load them into cargo nets (a process in which the animals proved to be less than cooperative).  The helicopter would then hover overhead (producing violent protests from the crocodiles, who didn't want anything to do with this strange bird), hook up the net, and airlift the croc to a safer place several miles up-river.  Once there, it was lowered to the ground, the net was removed, and the ropes and tape and other immobilizing bits and pieces were taken off.  This had to be done very carefully, always being prepared for some very high-speed maneuvers to get away from the by now extremely annoyed crocodile.  Video footage of proceedings was very popular with everyone except those immediately involved!

Africa, of course, is a very strange place, and its animals and aviation have their own stories to tell.  One of the worst is, I assure you, absolutely true.  People sometimes accuse me of making it up, so I'll let you read the news report at the link to prove that no, I'm not.

Peter

I bet the locals were a bit garum-py over that...

 

For those who didn't know, the staple sauce throughout the Roman Empire of old was called garum.

Garum is a fermented fish sauce that was used ... in the cuisines of Phoenicia, ancient Greece, Rome, Carthage, and later Byzantium ... The taste of garum is thought to have been comparable to that of today's Asian fish sauces.

Like modern fermented fish sauce and soy sauce, garum was a rich source of umami flavoring due to the presence of glutamates.

There's more at the link.

Believe it or not, after about 2,000 years or thereabouts, you can still buy authentic garum today.  Go check out what's available at the link.  If you prefer something slightly less fishy, British Worcestershire sauce is basically a modern version of garum.  It was developed "by accident", with a nasty unpalatable concoction left forgotten in a basement for years.  When rediscovered, it had matured into what we know today.  Read all about it at the link.

So, fermented fish sauce has a long and celebrated history . . . but one can have too much of a good thing, as the residents of St. Mary's in Canada learned to their cost.

Over 100 tanks of rotten fish sauce are finally being removed from a small Canadian town after stinking up the neighborhood for decades.

The supply of what’s been described as “the worst rotted fish you ever smelled” was left abandoned in the quaint town of St. Mary’s after the Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company shuttered more than 20 years ago.

Over the next few months, workers will embark on a $1.2 million project to drain roughly 110 tanks, each holding 3,000 gallons of fermented fish sauce.

The stinky sauce will then be mixed with peat moss to absorb the liquid, according to St. Mary’s volunteer mayor, Steve Ryan.

Trucks equipped with giant hoses will then suck up the material and deliver it to a massive pit lined with high-density polyethylene, where the waste will be buried in topsoil.

The dilapidated factory full of ditched fish sauce has wafted an indescribable smell over the town of roughly 300 people in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The liquid kept fermenting as the plant kept turning to ruin, with a blown-off roof and a wall knocked out by a storm in January.

There's more at the link.  Here's a video report on the process.

This is one time I'm truly, profoundly, deeply grateful that "scratch and sniff" technology hasn't made it to the pages of the Internet yet - or to the screens of our electronic devices!

Peter

I had no idea these things existed

 

I've heard of machines that deploy barbed or razor wire, making it easy to set up fences, obstacles, etc.  However, I'd never heard of a machine that got rid of those fences, even decades after they'd been strung.

A wire winder mounted on a skid steer can roll up a half-mile of old fence in about two minutes, a task that would probably take a half-day to accomplish by hand, said John Graves, director of conservation and resource management for the Sheridan Community Land Trust.

“It’s pretty darn cool,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “To sit there in the cab of the skid steer and watch that wire come in, it’s great.”

The importance of removing old barbed wire and woven-wire fences can’t be overstated, said Steve Martin, Wyoming director of the North American Pronghorn Association.

Old fences can block pronghorn from reaching thousands of acres of habitat in the Red Desert and other places in Wyoming and Montana, Martin told Cowboy State Daily.

There are countless miles of fence that must be removed and replaced with wildlife-friendly fencing, he said.

. . .

“Unlike deer and elk, pronghorn will rarely, if ever, jump a fence. They want to crawl under it,” he said.

So woven-wire fences are particularly hard on pronghorn, he said, because there’s no way to get underneath them.

Researchers from the University of Wyoming concluded that fences trapped pronghorn in areas of the Red Desert during the harsh 2022-2023 winter, and many of them died.

Recent upgrades to wildlife-friendly fences in the Red Desert opened up about 10,000 acres to pronghorn, Martin said.

There's more at the link.  Here's a brief video clip of the wire winder at work.

That's pretty ingenious.  I wonder who came up with the idea?  It's just another addition to the huge variety of tools and equipment that can be hung onto or off of skid-steer machines.  I saw one around here that had more than a dozen different attachments arranged in a long row at one side of the yard.  The driver could simply drive up to a gap in the row, drop the attachment he'd been using into the open space, drive to the next gizmo he needed, connect it up, and away he went.  It can't have taken more than a minute or two per attachment.  That's productivity for you!

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 322

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.