Late-January points.

--The guys who built a 30 foot tall bronze statue of Nelson Mandela weren't allowed to sign their work. Whether this was because of unease about having white South Africans be recognized for the work, or just to maintain that the statue was for all is unknown, but they decided to add a signature to the statue. They put a bunny in the ear.

It turns out that they were pushed to work quickly, and the Afrikaans word for "haste" is "haas," which also translates to "rabbit."  Now they've admitted that it's there, and have been ordered to remove it. This seems odd to me. Would we as a nation have minded if Bartholdi had signed the Statue Of Liberty? (Maybe he did. I don't know.) Did we demand that the little o be fixed when we discovered that the engravers who designed the U.S. penny intentionally wrought "UNITED STATES oF AMERICA" on our 1¢ piece?  Heck, no. We embraced it for over half a century.

--I'm afraid that I'm going to have to buy a Glock 42.

--The new S&W model 69 5-shot L-frame .44 Magnum looks interesting. Now, can they make a 369, with an alloy frame and titanium cylinder? Oh, I wouldn't much want to shoot Magnums through it, but it would be fun for carrying Specials in, with the chance for magnums in bear country.

--But of course, the M396 has taught us that it would probably become a kinetic bullet puller. Question: If you loaded the gun with 5 light-bullet loads (say, 165g or less), and one magnum heavy load for the first shot, would it be more or less likely to make the 4 remaining loads jump their crimp? What if the first round was a Special, and the second shot was a heavy bullet? How did they deal with the problem when they made the 329PD?

--Chief O'Brien had a bad job. This one made me giggle. Well, so did this one.

--I've had the theme song to The Love Boat in my head, for the last three days, now. I'm certain that I've never actually watched a full episode of that show. I will say that my voice bottoms out in the opening words pretty well, though I can't help warbling the word "new" like a lounge singer:
"Love. Exciting and new...."

--If the weather gets warmer this week, I plan a shooting date to try out a carbine, but not a high-dollar one. Stay tuned.

--It's 14 degrees here, but no precip. Down in Houston, they're expecting about .20" accumulations this morning. Big stuff for that southern Gulf Coast Texas city. I know this makes my friends up north giggle.