A Quick Run Around the Web -- December 8, 2015

The World In Which We Live:

• Check out this week's Woodpile Report.
• "Men have a better sense of direction than women, study says"--Fox News. I'll be showing this one to my wife....  From the article:

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technology that measures brain activity, the researchers saw that men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a different part of the brain than the women in the study.

"Men's sense of direction was more effective,” said Carl Pintzka, a medical doctor and doctoral candidate at the university’s Department of Neuroscience, in a press release. “They quite simply got to their destination faster.”

• "Chinese investment bankers missing"--The Guardian. "One of China’s biggest securities companies has said it has been unable to contact its top two investment bankers after media reports said the pair might be under investigation." 
• "US official: Iran tested another ballistic missile in Nov."--Washington Post. From the article: "Ballistic missiles are especially sensitive with Iran because they could provide the delivery system for a nuclear warhead. As part of nuclear negotiations with world powers, Iran in July accepted an eight-year extension of a U.N. ban on its ballistic missile program."
• "Mining sector in turmoil as Anglo American sheds 85,000 jobs"--San Francisco Chronicle. The commodities markets have imploded because of the slow down in China's production. According to the article, "[t]he price of copper has dropped about 30 percent in the past year; gold 11 percent; iron ore has about halved."
• "Stunning=> Over 100 MILLION Guns Sold in US Since Obama Became President"--Gateway Pundit. That is a lot. 
• "New Benghazi Email Shows DOD Offered State Department 'Forces that Could Move to Benghazi' Immediately – Specifics Blacked Out in New Document"--Judicial Watch. "In an email sent to top Department of State officials, at 7:19 p.m. ET, only hours after the attack had begun, Bash says, 'we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.'"
• "Buying Guns and the No Fly List"--Sense of Events. Explaining in detail why relying on the "no fly list" to regulate firearms is a bad idea.
• "Do citizens (not police officers) with guns ever stop mass shootings?"--Eugene Volokh at The Washington Post. A list and brief description of recent potential "mass shootings" stopped by armed citizens.
• "France and Venezuela: A Couple of Bright Lights in the Progressive Night"--The Diplomad.
• "San Bernardino: Did We Dodge A Bullet?"--Black Five. The author examines the possibility that the husband/wife terrorist team went off-plan to attack the Christmas party, thereby preventing a worse disaster. He notes, for instance: "Think about it:  the number killed by weapons was not nearly as high as it could have been, and the IEDs, which could have put this on par with the Paris attacks didn't work.  Did they move ahead of testing/rehearsing stage?"
• SNAFU: "Insider talks about 8 vs 8, Typhoons with mixed air-air/air-ground loadouts with F-35s defending..." And the mixed air groups get creamed by the op-for.
• "USS Zumwalt heads out for sea trials. THE BATTLESHIP IS BACK!"--SNAFU. And I read elsewhere that the Captain is named "James Kirk."
• J.R. Nyquist responds to a reader's inquiry on his thoughts about Russia and its move into Syria with a quote from Andrei Navrozov, The Gingerbread Race [p. 339]:

The restructuring militarization would initially mimic the mass culture of demilitarized civilization – with its ballot booths and its symbols of diversity, its social hypocrisies and political deceptions – as competently as it once simulated the aristocratic culture of old Russia. Then it would foment a Thirty Years War of a thousand local Vietnams, a pseudo-religious, pseudo-racial, pseudo-political, fragmentation to which a centralized power able to bring about global peace would be the progressive answer. 

Survival/Prepping:

• Quote of the day: "The high casualty count from Grid Down will not be due to hypothermia or heat stroke.  Nope.  It will be from people crapping in stairwells after the toilets stop flushing.  It will be due to diseases that we are rarely exposed to, here in a developed country."--Eaton Rapids Joe. Read the whole thing since he goes into some detail on what diseases we would encounter. (H/t Woodpile Report).
• "Survival Kits--What To Know"--Stormbringer. 
• "New Troy M-LOK Gear for 2016"--The Firearms Blog. Including a nifty forestock set for the AK series.
• A couple from the Silicon Graybeard:

• "Receivers and Other Radios"
• "Receivers and Other Radios - Part 2"