Grant Williams ASFA 2013 presentation

While this isn’t an economics or investment blog by any means, here’s a nice 30 minute presentation by Grant Williams recently given during the 2013 ASFA conference. Humorous as always and IMHO spot-on, outlining the current state of international financial markets, the current government bond bubble and equity rally of 2013… and how it’s all inevitably going to go down in flames. Very well worth watching, even if you aren’t a investor, trader or otherwise closely associated with the financial markets.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A3CoFyi2U8]

Savage 10 BAS scope rail – not a Picatinny

Dear Savage Arms… What the fuck?

Turns out, the freaking huge rail system mounted on the Savage 10 BA precision rifles actually isn’t a Picatinny, but apparently a Weaver rail or some other abomination. Which isn’t that huge of a deal if you are Joe Shmoe who just wants to mount regular two-piece scope rings that stay on that particular rifle “forever”… but it is a huge deal, if you’re trying to mount one-piece rings like my amazingly expensive ERA TAC that I bought specifically so I could easily swap optics between my rifles. Or any other kind of quick-release rings for that matter, since you have to space them according to the weaver profile, which will prevent you from putting that scope/ring-combo on any of your other rifles, since they most likely will have Picatinny rails.

Why for petes sake would you cut that rail to any other spec than Picatinny? The rifle is sold in your  law enforcement line of rifles… Law enforcement, as in police and military! MIL-STD-1913, anyone? Isn’t that the whole point of standards? So you can use them? Like everybody else in the industry?

Anyone else stumbled upon that problem? Looks like the workaround would be to cut new slots, or at least “adjust” one of them, so the scope mounts second recoil lug can slip into the widened slot.
Have the fine folks at Savage Arms come to their senses by now and fixed this in their later production line, or are all the 110 BA,  10 BAS-K and 10 BAT/S-K affected?

No DSLRs in Kuwait

Thinking about visiting Kuwait? Better leave your camera at home then – apparently the government just banned DSLRs from being used in public, unless it’s for journalistic purposes. Compact cameras and cellphone with cameras built-in are still ok though.

Why? At least according the local newspaper, the country has so little exposure to art, people tend to get afraid when seeing “big black cameras”.

And there I was, thinking people getting scared of “big black guns” are stupid. :-/