Ken Nelson

You didn’t vote for me? Screw you.

Sportsman generally hate Obama. I’ve never met a serious shooter, fisherman, or ATV rider that didn’t tilt way right or libertarian.

Obama hates them right back and appears ready to give the greenies a big thank you by banning fishing in some waters:

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

Never mind that Obama is supposed to be EVERYBODY’s President, not just be for those that donated to him.   No, he listens to the greenies and they want fishing stopped, because, as you know, eco-kooks lay awake at night worried that somebody somewhere is having fun outside.

Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable."

This is not the only access issue threatening the public’s right to fish, but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS.

I’m tired of fighting Obama and his minions and we are only a year into it.   I don’t know why they hate us, and America so, but they do, and I guess we will just have to suck up a little wind and continue to fight back.

What I’m really tired of is having a President I’m sure hates America. How the hell did that happen?

The USA Memory Championship was held yesterday, further proof that people will compete at virtually any human endeavor. The winner validated his surprise win from last year:

"I am beyond happy because I had to prove that (last year’s victory) was not chance, so now I am totally at peace. I love to compete against myself and getting better and better," said Ronnie White, of Fort Worth, Texas.

Which begs the  question as to why he couldn’t memorize a longer victory speech (-:

I participate in niche sports too, so I’m not mocking. Not at all. I think its great that we like to compete. I hope our economic competition survives the latest onslaught.

The competition sounds tough… memorize 99 names, 100+ digits in the right order. I’d get a headache. But I’m glad somebody can do and enjoy it.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=19d63b12-7bfe-4a49-9df7-5402200a2b59.html#lindsey+vonn+unplugged

Not as wild as Franz Klammer’s run back in 1976, but pretty darn close.

Julie Mancuso finished second by less than a second. Her run was pretty good too.

And here is a link for those who only watch for the crashes…

The student becomes the master…

I knew it had to happen sometime. I just didn’t quite expect it so soon.  My son smacked me down. Sat on me. Owned me. In pistol shooting… that is.

In the past, he had beat me once ,by a very small percentage and only when I’d had severe jamming of my pistol.

But yesterday, he started with an early 1st stage smack down, and then turned on the heat. He finished 4th overall (of 36 shooters) , with 116 seconds, I in the middle of the pack with 157 seconds. His score was within 1.5 seconds of 2nd place.   I would have had top ten if I had not had a lot of jams on the 5th and 6th stages, but even if the gun had run, I wasn’t in his league on that day.

Which pleases me (-;

This match didn’t have a lot of movement. I can still move better than him, but in stages stressing shooting and gun handling – he has an edge…. for now.

Oh… and he’s just 12.

My son has a goal of becoming an A class USPSA shooter before he turns 13.   I think he will be able to do it because he shoots fast and straight and the classifiers are usually just shooting, not movement.

But matches have lots of movement, so he is working on that too.

Monday, Wed, Friday, and Sunday he does SPARQ training using a rope ladder and cones. Drills like this:

and

http://adland.tv/SuperBowlCommercials

Newser asks:

Can Evan Lysacek Make Make Figure Skating Cool?

A: No.

Further evidence:

I admire the skill and perseverance to do male figure skating at a high level.  But it ain’t, and never will be, “cool”. Sorry.

But until practical pistol shooting has its version of “Ice Capades” I guess male skaters will have a better chance of using their passion as a profession.  So maybe they get the last laugh.

Whether finger style guitar, downhill skiing at 80+ miles an hour, or making incredible basketball shots, what humans can do astounds.

The shots are amazing even if shot conventionally. But behind the back in the air – sick! 

Santa brought Brian a Western Arms gas blowback replica of an SV Infinity 5”:

Thrown in a CED Air Soft timer, and some 1/7th scale USPSA steels and plate rack to make a complete training system in garage, basement or backyard.

The system uses “green gas”, which is basically propane without the scent. One $19 tank of actual propane and a $5 dollar tube of silicon oil will keep him shooting for a few thousand airsoft shots.

The system blows back the slide and is an exact replicate of an SVI Infinity 5”. They fit in my 2011 holster system and the magazines fit in the magazine holders on my belt as well.

Once we sorted it out (the manuals are in Japanese) we found it quite realistic and very accurate.  Using a USPSA target sized to simulate 20 yards, he got 1.30 second draw to A zone hits in our first tests.  Hitting pop cans at 15-20 yards is no problem. We have the system dialed down a bit now, but we can rev up the gas it uses to better simulate recoil.

Driven by the popularity of airsoft IPSC in Japan and Asia, there are many after market options for these guns.

In the “kick them when they are down” department… Jupiter Island style aficionados do not like Tiger Woods’ new mansion he is building there:

She’s hardly alone in her assessment. In a recent informal poll of 5,500 readers at page2live, a Web site of the Post columnist Jose Lambiet — who called the new house “a cross between a discount motel and a beachside nursing home” — 60 percent said the house was “too ugly” for Jupiter Island, part of Florida’s hallowed Treasure Coast.

It cost $44.5 million for just the property. Add in building costs and taxes running $500+K a year and you have to wonder just how far a billion goes these days…

If this happens, go shopping

If the home team loses versus the point spread then domestic violence in that town goes up 8%.

Controlling for location and time fixed effects, weather factors, the pre-game point spread, and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses by the home team (losses in games that the home team was predicted to win by more than 3 points) lead to an 8 percent increase in police reports of at-home male-on-female intimate partner violence.

Contrasting… home team unexpected wins lower domestic violence by a small amount.

For the effect to be this pronounced there would have to be a very high correlation between football watchers and those prone to domestic violence.

Football watching might be something to watch for in prospective spouses ladies…

Maggie Wigness, a 22 year old under-graduate at Pacific University, knows football, but doesn’t obsess over it. And she knows math and how to program. She put that to good use developing a program that beats the currently used BCS college football ranking system handily:

By factoring in plays during games, she was able to establish the top-tier teams with greater than 70 percent accuracy.

Of course a truly useful computer program would convince the NCAA to HOLD PLAYOFFS.  Because no matter what the BCS says,  if OK doesn’t play Florida ever in the season, or somebody who beat them in a season, you really don’t know who was best.

 
BCS and Maggie’s program would have had divide by zero errors on my alma mater.

 
Gang Assault proposed as new sport for Chicago Olympics

I wish the SEIU would order Obama to defeat Islamic terrorists, or something worthy. Instead he just wanders about the world trying to get the Olympics to Chicago. Well, actually I don’t know that the SEIU ordered him to Copenhagen, but it isn’t implausible is it??

If ONLY he would limit his other stupid ideas to Chicago.

I decided this summer that I positively hate Chicago. They hit me with toll booths every quarter mile, the toll money obviously wasn’t being put back into the roads, and they inflicted Barack Obama on the rest of us.

It almost makes me wish Chicago would have to suffer through an Olympics, except I know that Obama would shovel them money.

Please go away Chicago. And take Obama with you.

This weekend my son and I competed in the Utah USPSA Practical Shooting state championship.

This was our first big, “sanctioned” match.  We’d been steadily progressing in local club matches and felt the next step was to try a “big” match.

Put succinctly… we were schooled. Imagine acing a local 3 par golf course and then going to Oakmont the week before the US Open. Sand traps, tricky greens, & 12 inch rough expose any weakness. And that is what the state level stages did to us.

Complex, tricky stages with lots of new types of targets we hadn’t seen before ate our lunch.  Some stages were so large or complex that we had trouble remembering our plans past their first half. We didn’t shoot targets, we missed others, we had to backtrack to shoot targets we’d forgotten. Ugly!

Four stages in found us disconsolate with a  “why are we here” attitude?  Then casting worry aside, we just said “to heck with planning, lets just run like heck and shoot fast” and see what happens.  And that worked.

Brian was the only Junior, so he got a nice trophy. He held up well under the stress of the tough stages. Equipment issues hit him on the first stage, giving him a zero. Except for that first disastrous stage, he placed in the middle of the pack and even beat Dad on two stages. Not bad for 12 years old!

I pulled myself up on the last four stages, even making the top 10 scores on one stage, and actually ended up being the Top new shooter – beating about 20 others in that category.

We met lots of very nice and helpful people who didn’t mind at all that we were struggling. So we look forward to doing it again next year.