Donward

Fatspiration? On our music thread? Well then. Time for some relevant contributions.

Pics in gun porn section!

I'm not sure if it would have helped even if the Archduke lived.

He would have been arrested on the spot for brandishing if it was slung in front and he had a hand on it. Seattle PD though are pretty good about dealing with Open Carry people. They see worse and weirder every day.

Here is the Seattle Police Department's blotter. http://spdblotter.seattle.gov/2015/05/01/16-rioters-arrested-3-officers-injured-after-violent-demonstration-on-capitol-hill/ We also had a guy toting a machete with the word "death" written on it. Batteries, a hammer, various bricks and stones, sticks with bolts in them. As for firearms, there was also a guy open carrying a rifle, who took part in the May Day Festivities. He said he was there to "protect the protesters" or some such thing. http://q13fox.com/2015/05/01/man-carrying-rifle-near-may-day-march-location-these-people-have-a-right-to-free-speech/

They had rocks and flare guns as well but that is par for the course. The wrenches, though, were kind of an unusual touch. And made me think of the Dodgeball line. I'm guessing the anarchists were thinking the same thing.

I've seen plenty of coyotes in suburban settings. Plenty of cats and pet food to munch on. In the suburban neighborhood where my wife used to live, there was a coyote that would come and eat the apples from a tree in a nearby foreclosed property. I've never heard of coyote and wolves cross-breeding though since they tend to me mortal enemies in the wild or at least that's what I thought.

Watching news coverage of the May Day Riots in downtown Seattle. Same old, same old with thugs destroying property and general asshattery of a stereotypical nature. It wouldn't even warrant attention were it not for a new technique the rioters used to assault police officers. Namely that a bunch of them came to the protests with backpacks full of wrenches which they tossed at the police lines, sending three cops to the hospital. The only other incident of note was watching footage of masked anarchists vandalizing and destroying public artwork on the lawn of Seattle Central Community College because it was "corporate art" while hippy artists pleaded with them to stop.

Trolling around the Internets and I came across this period US military training video on the AK-47 filmed (I assume) sometime during the Vietnam War. It was interesting to note at the 1:15 mark, the sergeant describes the AK's cartridge as an intermediate round and "not a very good combat load". Edit: And the sequel featuring the SKS.

Sturgeon. It goes like this. In the 1969 movie Easy Rider, southern rednecks are portrayed as the film's bad guys, showing intolerance and bigotry to the film's protagonists, Wyatt "Captain America" (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper). For those of you not in the know, Easy Rider is probably the first mainstream "counter culture" movie which romanticizes hitch-hiking, drug use, hippy communes and features Jack Nicholson in his break-out role as George Hanson, an ACLU attorney. As the story of the movie goes, Fonda and Hopper who wrote, produced and directed the film had no real set script and much of the movie is ad-libbed and filmed as opportunities arose. One of the more infamous scenes features the trio of Wyatt, Billy and George being harassed by locals in a Louisiana diner for their long hair and unorthodox dress. The extras in the scene were locales hired on the spot and as movie magic motivation, were told to act like the trio were rapists and murderers who just killed a little girl outside of town. The scene is portrayed as a classic example of the intolerance of outsiders in the Deep South. As I always like to say, Easy Rider does have a happy ending. The two rednecks driving the pickup truck were local amateurs also hired on the spot.

I've heard anecdotal stories about sightings of wolves West of the Cascade mountains in Washington state for years. Usually from loggers or guys who spend a lot of time in the woods and away from civilization (see hermits, kooks). But it looks like we may finally have concrete evidence of wolves on the wetter (and more populated) side of Washington state. http://mynorthwest.com/174/2754998/Wolf-killed-on-I90-might-be-confirmation-animals-have-crossed-Cascades As a bit of a geography lesson, the area described is about 40 miles from downtown Seattle and about 30 from suburban neighborhoods that include places like the Microsoft campus. And it is about ten miles from where I am typing this. The politics of wolves interacting with farmers and ranchers is a particularly touchy one and those of you who are familiar with the stories surrounding ranchers in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Eastern Washington interacting with wolves introduced from Yellowstone and which have migrated down from Canada will know how touchy this situation can be. Personally, I feel that wolf packs would have no trouble at all adapting as "urban wildlife" living in rural and suburban enclaves close to man and civilization. We already see species like coyotes and black bears doing the same. Wolves are an intelligent, creative and adaptable species. Put into an environment where you have a mixture of open space mixed with suburban housing units which contain easy food sources like garbage cans, domestic pets like cats and small dogs and unattended children, I can see wolfpacks thriving if left to their own devices. Unfortunately, while the introduction of an apex predator like the wolf (and particularly the Canadian timber wolf) into Western Washington would be a Godsend in cutting down the influx of invasive species like possum, domestic cats and Californians, I have a hunch that political pressure will be put in trying to interdict wolf packs living over here.

And what is also obvious, the spinal cord injury occurred inside the van, according to "sources". Which seems to corroborate all of the credible information to this point.

I feel jipped. Fat man in worn-out sweat pants firing a gun and NOT resulting in the aforementioned sweatpants dropping hilariously is not what I expect from YouTube channels.

I guess we need two more for John Snow and Tyrion Lannister to ride as well. Also, holy crap, that thing is the stuff of nightmares.

No surprise. No surprise at all. Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says

No. Craig. Larry Craig.

I don't have the time to really delve to far into this. But after fishing season, we often take a few days off in the Alaska town of Aleknagik that my wife's family founded in the Great Depression. There's a University of Washington fisheries program there which counts fish and has been studying the life cycle of salmon continuously since the 1950s doing wonderful things like tracking DNA of fish. With Sockeye salmon, they need streams to spawn in but - more important - they need a lake where they spend the first year or two of their lives as fingerlings/smolt before migrating to salt water oceans. The last time we were there, a couple years ago, we were chatting with the head biologist there who was every bit as much interested in our story of the salmon life cycle as we were of his. One of the things he related was quite the opposite of the standard theory of Global Warming and salmon in that the warmer temperatures kill the salmon which need cool streams to thrive. Instead he mentioned that warmer temperatures saw more microorganisms living in the water of lakes and streams which provide more food for fish like salmon. And then he joked about not telling anyone because he'd lose his funding. Warmer temperatures. More salmon. Good for Don! I'm not trying to make my anecdotal story of a conversation over steaks as evidence of some huge scientific phenomenon. It's not. But I do like to think that Mother Nature is a very complicated old bitch who has plenty of safety valves and thermostats which can regulate how Planet Earth operates.

On the other hand, sometimes their job is made much more easy. Would-be thieves in small Alaska village steal frozen pizzas, sell them to police

More news about mammoths. Researchers map genomes of woolly mammoths, raising possibility of bringing them back “With a complete genome and this kind of data, we can now begin to understand what made a mammoth a mammoth—when compared to an elephant—and some of the underlying causes of their extinction which is an exceptionally difficult and complex puzzle to solve,” he says. While scientists have long argued that climate change and human hunting were major factors behind the mammoth’s extinction, the new data suggests multiple factors were at play over their long evolutionary history. “We found that the genome from one of the world’s last mammoths displayed low genetic variation and a signature consistent with inbreeding, likely due to the small number of mammoths that managed to survive on Wrangel Island during the last 5,000 years of the species’ existence,” says Love Dalén, an associate professor of Bioinformatics and Genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History “The dates on these current samples suggest that when Egyptians were building pyramids, there were still mammoths living on these islands,” says Poinar. “Having this quality of data can help with our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of elephants in general and possible efforts at de-extinction”.

It's just been revoked!

Looks remarkably like a French MAS. Oh. I guess that's because it basically is. Did they rechamber it to 8mm Mauser or keep it 7.5?

South Afrikans make for some great characters in Hollywood movies. Such as in Lethal Weapon 2, when Riggs is allowed to have consequence-free sex with babe Rika Van Den Hass. As well as being the set-up for this priceless one-liner. As a summary, who could have foreseen that the South Afrikans were the least racist people in that movie.

Their target audience must be pro-pot Libertarians...

It must have opened fairly recently what with the Pro-pot Initiative passing in 2012. Although I don't get down to Spanaway as much as I used. I always found them to be a pretty good spot for blackpowder stuff and - of course - stick slinger supplies. Although it's been a decade or so since I darkened their doors.

Having everything go wrong and then the bears showing up is usually the punchline to my Alaska stories. No bears this adventure, sadly. However, I am of the opinion that some of you all need to move up to Washington state. Parkland/Spanaway in particular.