News of the Day

Two completely unrelated news items and some extraneous commentary.

The AK-47 turns sixty years old.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288456,00.html

I have often pondered that two of my hobbies over the past two decades were both designed by humble and relatively simple people while unconscious. Mikhail Kalashnikov drew up the idea for the AK after being knocked goofy by a German shell in 1941, Adolphe Sax designed his namesake woodwind sometime in 1840 (coincidentally slightly more than 100 years earlier) while in the hospital after banging his head on the street in front of his Belgian house. According to legend, in both cases, the designer woke up and asked for a pen and paper to scratch out a design that had been floating in their respective heads over the past few days. The Kalashnikov story is much easier to verify, but I have no reason not to trust my 5th grade band teacher who helped me get into music. For the record, after a bad experience in 9th grade band, I gave up playing the saxophone (a Keilwerth tenor) and sold the instrument two years later. I had an AK (Romanian SAR-1 in 7.62x39) for about two years earlier this decade, but sold it to help fund another AR-15. Some day, I'll get another....of both. On a related note, I have inked out some of my best ideas, while nowhere near the significance of either the AK or saxophone, on fast food napkins sprawled over the console of my truck.


11 year old Alabama girl arrested for DUI after 8-mile police chase.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/06/child.driver.chase.ap/index.html

I'll leave the commentary simple. WTF???