20021211

My blogroll is hosed
Either Blogger has come down with another bug, or someone has hacked it to the point that the hrefs are all gone from the links in my blogroll.

Bastidges!

Update: partially restored. Will validate links to blogs who have moved. Please let me know if you link to me but I have not reciprocated.
Update to the update: partially restored my a**. The template keeps losing the href arguments to all links on the blog.

20021209

Ah ayahm ruh'miss . . .
. . . in welcoming to my blogroll, Jakester and Chicago Boyz.

My feeble connections to Chicago amount to one memorable lunch at the Berghoff and many plane changes at my least favorite airport (so far), O'Hare. Sorry.

Seattle holds more for me, as I had a customer in Bellevue, and still have a friend in North Bend. And a coffee mug from Poulsbo.

Update: . . . and my wife's cousin in Seattle proper, and two trips to the pie shop in North Bend, featured in the show Twin Peaks.

20021208

Darwinian testimonials
James Rummel asks why many people who depend upon handguns in their professions appear to be so emotional about the caliber .45 Automatic Centerfire Pistol cartridge.

The very unscientific answer to James's question is that many users either survived a lethal encounter, or know closely someone who has, while using said caliber. Those who entered similiar lethal encounters with arms or cartridges dispensing less power, uh, are less likely to have survived them, so there are fewer people available to testify to their effectiveness. Doubtless many cops have shot their way out of such encounters with a 9mm, for example, but I seriously have never heard anyone in that business say "If the 9mm Parabellum weren't such a potent and decisive manstopper, son, I wouldn't be standing here today." I have heard quite the opposite, from people who were skilled or lucky enough to survive in spite of the round. Reports of orcs absorbing multiple hits from .45, or from 10mm, are met with head-scratching puzzlement, because they are so rare.

Consider the term Darwinian testimonial, though perhaps a better term can be found. I do not claim to have had such an experience either way, but I know enough people who have, and their consensus is that the 9mm is an inadequate round for the application, all other things being equal. That suffices. If recoil, expense, platform, or other reasons require that one choose the 9mm over a larger caliber, its lesser effectiveness could be compensated, say through training to emphasize shot placement.


Update: Please visit James's post, and the comments thereunto. This argument is as old as either cartridge is, and will not be resolved any time soon. Your humble narrator is mulling a further post on the "conceptual space occupied by a handgun" the better to frame my flimsy argument.
What she said
This is just one more reason I admire Megan McArdle's writing. Conciseness, and an appeal to shared experience.
I think we've all had the experience of saying something accidentally that appeared to have an unequivocal horrifying meaning which was not at all what we had meant to say.

I've said such things more times than I want to remember.