The two Dallas, Texas area kids were born just seven minutes apart and were carried to term by the same mother. A mother who gave birth to the two “twins” said she had an affair that resulted in the two babies who were born at the same time, but fathered by two different men. So they are not really brothers. The precise medical term isheteropaternal superfecundation. The accepted term in the more popular vernacular is cheatin’. I’m so proud they all come from Texas…
Myth: .50 caliber rifles are evil and should be banned
.50 caliber rifles can knock the fuel line of an airliner at a mile. A .50 can penetrate concrete bumkers. The .50 is the favorite weapon of terrorists. .50 Shooters are terrorists in training. The Founding Fathers never envisioned a rifle round that big. This some of the utter horse patootie one hears.
Facts: Most expert long distance shooters cannot hit a stationary target under perfect, windless conditions at that distance. Ill-trained terrorists shooting a high-recoil .50 at fast moving targets (what is the speed of an airliner?) have no chance. Ground operations with a fully auto .50, sniping parked jets, air to air combat in full auto? Sure. None of those are terrorist operations. .50’s are heavy (20-45 pounds), expensive ($2,500-$10,000+ with ammo going from $3-$100 per round), mostly ridiculous to conceal (they’re big horkin’ rifles for the most part) and impractical. A fully automatic AK-47 can be had in Pakistan for less than $200 (for another gun myth post). The average US .50 shooter/owner is a successful business man with an annual income of $50,000+ (Congressional testimony of John Burtt). The guns of the early American republic were larger that the .50. Some were as high as .812 caliber, but most were between .60 and .75. According to the General Accounting Office (GAO) in report #OSI-99-15R, revised 10/21/2001, .50 caliber rifles have been used in 18 crimes in the history of the US. The misguided terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center buildings used box cutters…
Net learning: Banning .50’s will have zero effect on gun crimes and terrorists.
Make of this what you will. Egypt is freaking out and slaughtering all of the pigs that exist in the country. It is driven by outright fear of the H1N1 virus thing. The current H1N1 is a glom of avian, swine and human influenza. Just like the glom of reaction, which is fueled by fear, ignorance, politics, religion…
What Egypt is doing will certainly not have much of an impact. The folks doing the clean up are certainly going to be readily exposed if there is a pig vector. (Perhaps nobody really gives a flip about the Coptics?) And if the logic was sound, why aren’t all the birds or people being killed?
Non Sequitur 