Thursday, March 17, 2016

March 17, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Video: "ARES SCR Generation 2 Review"--The Firearms Blog channel. A positive review.

Firearms/Self-Defense:

  • ".380’s Sales Surge…Again"--The Truth About Guns. Quoting an article at Fox News: “Production of the super-small handgun is at a 16-year high, with nearly 900,000 made in the U.S. in 2014, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”
  • "Choosing the ‘pool gun’ for your family and home defense: what’s best?"--Grant Cunningham. Some tips and suggestions for selecting a firearm that could be picked up and used by anyone in your family. One tip: "When picking a gun to fit all family members, remember that in general it’s easier for someone to deal with a too-small firearm than one which is too large; this is especially true if the person using the smaller gun is more highly trained or skilled."
  • "Detecting Hidden Cameras: A Basic Introduction To Counter Surveillance"--Schafer's Self Defense Corner. First, deal with the obvious: "The first thing you should do is go over to the desk and find that notepad they leave for you, normally over by the phone, and tear off the top piece.  Take a piece of tape and tape that paper over top of the peephole in your door, if you don’t have any tape you should be able to ball it up and jam it inside, just make sure it doesn’t fall out." Next cover cameras on your smart phone, tablet, or computer, and unplug the television. Then move on to the less obvious. Read the whole thing.
  • "The MAS-49 Was the Foreign Legion’s Favorite Rifle"--War is Boring.


Survival/Prepping:


Other Stuff:
In 2005, John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, published a paper, “Why most published research findings are false,” mathematically showing that a huge number of published papers must be incorrect. He also looked at a number of well-regarded medical research findings, and found that, of 34 that had been retested, 41% had been contradicted or found to be significantly exaggerated.
    Since then, researchers in several scientific areas have consistently struggled to reproduce major results of prominent studies. By some estimates, at least 51%—and as much as 89%—of published papers are based on studies and experiments showing results that cannot be reproduced.
    • "The 30% solution — when war without end ends: Spengler"--David P. Goldman at the Asia Times. "Nations do not fight to the death, but they frequently fight until their pool of prospective fighters has reached a point of practical exhaustion. In most cases, this involves reaching the 30% mark where casualties are concerned." The implications is that rather than attempting to reduce casualties among the enemy forces, the goal should be to inflict as heavy of casualties as possible.
    • "Betting on Gray Sludge: What Fun"--Peter Grant. Grant considers and then discounts the idea that Americans will attempt to secede, start a civil war, elevate a dictator, or otherwise attempt to take back control of the government. Instead:
      That leaves gray-sludge-and-twilight. The cultural level will continue to fall as waves of intellectually illiterate graduates pour from the universities. Schools of engineering and science will mostly resist enstupidation–the definite integral will prove an absolute barrier to affirmative action–but liberal studies, the heart of civilization, will remain dead. Hostility and perhaps mini-wars will erupt between Americans and the Somalis, Moslems, and Guatemalans brought in by the DC-NYC axis, but these will probably be inconclusive. Christianity will be reduced to a low level, though Judaism and Islam will flourish as their adherents have the will to prevent suppression.
        The economy will continue its slide while the rich, no longer attached to any particular country, will become stupefyingly rich. (Someone recently paid $172 million for a Modigliani). If things go bad in Manhattan, they can easily move to the south of France.
          I do not see how civil unrest (it won’t be civil) can fail to arise. Comfortable people, which white Americans still barely are, do not readily clash with others. But comfort dwindles. The young now often have to live with their parents. People with advanced degrees work as baristas at Starbucks. Universities use “adjunct professors,” academic migrant workers, to lower pay and avoid providing benefits. Many companies hire people as “individual contractors,” likewise to avoid paying benefits. Large numbers who want to work are on food stamps and unemployment.
            Not parenthetically, I remember being in Italy at breakfast with a tour group. The restaurant had not ordered enough food for the buffet. These sophisticated and civil people began grabbing, reaching over each other, to get the yogurt and doughnuts. Civilization is a veneer, and not a thick one. Nationally, we are running out of doughnuts.
              One thing is clear: America is no longer “one nation under God” (who is, I suppose, an undocumented alien).It is an unhappy land of warring tribes, of peoples who have nothing in common and do not like each other. Blacks, whites, browns, Syrians, Somalis, Southerners, Yankees, Christians, mostly detesting each other. The battle lines are drawn. The question is what kind of battle it will be.
               Updated: A couple additional items:

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