October 14, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Video: "Official CAUGHT Outlining Democrat VOTER FRAUD Playbook"--Black Pigeon. Yes, voter fraud is one of the steps toward a country's collapse.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• "The Rules"--Rory Miller at Chiron Training. A short discussion about the fact that there are rules--scripts, really--that are followed in the escalation toward a fight. He adds:

... There is great power in seeing the game and choosing not to play- it is almost a superpower to be able to focus on the problem and ignore the social mine-field surrounding it.

That's very cool, but in a way it is sort of a trap as well. When you step away from the monkey games it is easy to forget that all the people you deal with every day are still primates. What looks silly and petty when you are dealing with avoiding death and injury is the very definition of what others see as human... and when you cease to come across like a person, they have to figure out who and what you are.

I think this is why so many good operators get 'reined in' by their bosses even when they have done nothing wrong. It's not punishment and only partly a power play. The bosses are just reassuring themselves that the operator is still a human, still a member of the tribe and still knows his or her place in the tribe.

To be anything else is to be unreadable, possible a stealth predator, a wolf in ape's clothing.

•  TGIF: Another "Weekend Knowledge Dump" from Active Response Training.
• "Evolution of the Winchester Lever-Action Rifle"--The Truth About Guns. A brief history of the different models and primary calibers offered for each model.
• "More Thoughts on the AR"--Art of the Rifle. After using the AR--and carrying it around--for a period of time to gain a real familiarity with the system, the author discusses his thoughts. Of course,the ergonomics are there. However, he notes that he really grew to appreciate the longer K-Mod handguards, including the ability to rest them on something when shooting. He also indicated that he grew to appreciate the 20-round magazines over the 30-rounders, particular when shooting from a prone position. Read the whole thing.
• "Emergency Life Saving Armor In a Bag!"--The Firearms Blog. When zipped close, the ELSA Emergency Life Saving Armor looks like a piece of soft-sided luggage, but unzipped, it is a plate carrier that provides both front and back protection (depending on what soft armor inserts or ballistic plates you have included). The ELSA is basically just the plate carrier, so you still have to buy plates or inserts. Retail is $199.
• "Why I’m No Fan of Appendix Carry"--The Truth About Guns. The author writes that although many experienced teachers are using appendix carry, he believes it is too dangerous for most people. In doing so, he relates a couple incidents where people have accidentally shot themselves. The two main points seem to be that it does not work well for those with a large gut, and that if you screw up just once on reholstering the firearm, you are going to get shot in the pelvis or the leg (i.e., the region of your femoral artery).
• One of my favorite subjects: "The Black Death" by Wendy Orent at Aeon. Orent, you may remember, is the author of the book Plague, which I reviewed back in 2012. This short article raises some of the favorite topics from her original book--evidence that the particular strain of y. pestis that caused the black death, was a  strain of pnuemonic plague that developed among the marmots of central Asia, caught by those that hunted or trapped the animals, and subsequently was spread by human to human contact and human-adapted fleas westward into the Middle-East, Europe, and Africa. This particular article summarizes the main points of her earlier book, but updated with some new findings. She writes about the marmot strain:

We know that the Black Death started in Central Asia, almost certainly among marmots – large, intensely social rodents often hunted by humans. Marmots are so ubiquitous and characteristic that Marco Polo referred to them as ‘Pharaoh’s rats’. They were the source of the 20th century’s three great pneumonic plague outbreaks: two well-known Manchurian plagues of 1910 and 1920 (which killed 60,000 and 10,000 respectively), and a third little-known outbreak in 1917-18 in Shansi, China (which killed some 16,000).

Poinar’s analysis, in fact, suggested the importance of the marmot in the Black Death. Modern marmot plague strains have genes that allow them to ‘ferment glycerol’ – that is, to make use of a building block of fat found in hibernating animals. Marmots hibernate, and plague germs can maintain themselves in the somnolent animals without killing their hosts. In the spring, as the marmots awake, the infection wakes up too, sickening the marmot and contaminating its fleas with bacteria-laden blood. Many modern strains, particularly those derived from rats, which do not hibernate, cannot ferment glycerol. Interestingly, Poinar’s reconstructed genome shows that the ancient Black Death strains could ferment glycerol too, further evidence of a marmot origin to the Black Death.

Despite his best efforts, the pneumonic strain escaped the hospital, fled with soldiers on a railway, and caused 10,000 deaths before they got it under control

The physician Wu Lien-teh noted in the early 20th century that marmot-plague infections later spread by fleas have an unusual ability to reach the lungs of human patients and provoke a pneumonic outbreak. In the 1920 epidemic, Wu treated the index case, a woman who had contracted bubonic plague through the skin, from a marmot, and later developed a secondary pneumonia. Despite his best efforts, the pneumonic strain escaped the hospital, fled with soldiers on a railway, and caused 10,000 deaths before physicians and public health workers got it under control.

The late Russian plague expert, Igor V Domaradskij, who was also the co-designer of the Soviet bioweapons programme known as Biopreparat, told me in 2003 that the only plague strain the Soviets worked with was marmot plague, whose explosive power they well understood.

Vladimir Motin, a Russian plague expert now working at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, agrees that the marmot-derived strains from Central Asia are more powerful and dangerous than plague strains found elsewhere in the world. But he adds that no one yet knows why. You can’t read transmissibility by looking at a genetic blueprint, though the explosive behaviour of marmot-derived plague is clear from recent history.

Of course, one of the other factors that allowed the plague to spread so rapidly was the existence of the Mongol Empire, which allowed the plague to spread rapidly through the efficient trade and communication routes (using a pony-express type message system) within the Empire, which spread from Chine to the borders of Europe. And this is where her concerns regarding a modern day recurrence arise: 

And deadly, explosive marmot plague is with us too. In 2015, Thomas Zimmerman, a researcher who has worked at the US National Security Council and the Department of Defense, described China’s ambitious new proposal, called OBOR (‘One Belt, One Road’), to build a massive highway from southern China across the mainland into southern Russia and Belarus through to Poland, Germany and down into France. Tentacles also reach into Uzbekistan and Pakistan. The point of OBOR is to revive the old Silk Road, selling industrial goods – trains and planes – instead of silk, spices and porcelain.

Vladimir Motin views this looming superhighway, which runs through the worst plague habitat on Earth, with a touch of dread. The explosiveness of marmot plague has never diminished. And marmot plague outbreaks still happen in China, Kazakhstan and elsewhere with irregular but dismal frequency. Whole neighborhoods are sometimes quarantined to this day. In the age of antibiotics, in an age of hygiene where human fleas no longer torment us, we are unlikely to see a new Black Death, but two of the ancient dark stars – marmot plague and a rapidly expanding economic empire – could still produce pockets of explosive, deadly disease. Even with the best treatment, some 14 per cent of pneumonic plague victims still die. Marmot plague gliding silently and rapidly on high-speed trains or down a superhighway would not cause a new Black Death, but it isn’t a pleasant prospect.

• "Did a comet strike Earth 55 million years ago? Glass spheres suggest impact may led to rise of mammals"--Daily Mail. From the article:

Around 55 million years ago, Earth experienced a series of sudden and extreme global warming events, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM).

Little is known about the causes of this warming period, but it has previously been linked to the rise of mammals on Earth. 

Now, a new discovery could shed more light on this period in the planet's history.

Researchers have now provided the first direct evidence that a comet struck Earth during this time – although it is unknown whether this occurred in relation to the warming period.

I can remember from my youth being told that it was the mammal's fur which allowed it to prosper in a cold environment for which other animals were less suited. I guess the science is never settled.

To Dissolve The People And Elect Another...

• "Voter Fraud Is Real. Here’s The Proof"--The Federalist. One example: "In Texas, authorities are investigating criminals who are using the technique of 'vote harvesting' to illegally procure votes for their candidates. 'Harvesting' is the practice of illegally obtaining the signatures of valid voters in order to vote in their name without their consent for the candidate(s) the criminal supports."
• "Texas voter fraud? ‘Elections have been stolen,’ Lon Burnam says"--Star-Telegram. 
• "Texas Vote Fraud Investigations: Democrats Plan For It To Happen Everywhere"--Conservative HQ.
• "This City Is 78% Latino, and the Face of a New California"--New York Times. The article reports that Santa Ana, with a population of 343,000, is 78% Hispanic, and with all city councilmen being Hispanic. The article points out the massive shift of power and population to Hispanic:

Immigrants living illegally in California are entitled to driver’s licenses. Their children can receive state-funded health insurance. Local law enforcement officials generally do not provide information to federal immigration authorities, as they do in many other parts of the country. On a smaller, if no less symbolic, level, the first thing the Santa Ana City Council did when it went all-Latino in 2006 was pass a law requiring simultaneous translation of all of its meetings to Spanish.

***

The historic downtown is clustered around what the official city map calls “Fourth Street,” but everyone here knows as “Calle Cuatro.”

A twirl of the dial on a car radio reveals a choice of Spanish-language stations. The sidewalks of Calle Cuatro are lined with stands selling churritos and tostilocos.

“There’s no attempt to whitewash the city anymore,” said Aurelia Rivas, 26, a student working at her parents’ fruit and snack stand one afternoon. Referring to the annual Day of the Dead celebration, she added, “It’s like everyone knows that Día de los Muertos is going to be just as big and important of a celebration as the Fourth of July.”
The power and presence of Latinos in this community in Orange County — itself once a bastion of Republicanism — is echoed up and down the California coast. Latinos now make up just under 40 percent of the state’s population, projected to increase to 47 percent by 2050. The leaders of both houses of the Legislature are Latino, as is the secretary of state, the current mayor of Los Angeles and the previous mayor.

* * *

In California, the Democrats are solidly in control, and Hispanics are a crucial and growing part of their base and help explain why Hillary Clinton has a huge advantage over Donald J. Trump.

“Over the last 10 years, we have really solidified the power, especially in the Legislature,” said Lorena Gonzalez, a Democratic member of the State Assembly from San Diego. “People are more afraid of being seen as not supporting Latinos than supporting them. You see this most clearly with the rhetoric of Republicans here — they are falling all over themselves to support Latino candidates.”

One way of looking at this is to take comfort in the fact (from a distance) the integration appears to have largely been peaceful. However, if it didn't involve white Americans, an international body might look to what has happened as ethnic cleansing. Certainly the demographics have changed; I guess the future will show us what the Latinos do with their power in California.

Life in the 21st Century:

• "The MiniMaker 3D Printer Wants to Be the EasyBake Oven of 3D Printing"--IEEE Spectrum. From the article:

... The compact $250 3D printer can create objects as large as 15 centimeters in each dimension out of nontoxic filament.

* * *

XYZ spokesman Ash Marin says that this gadget, the company’s cheapest model, calibrates itself. Software available for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers lets users test different orientations for objects they plan to print, scale them, and virtually slice them up; it will then calculate a print time before starting. Other provided software offers simple CAD tools, along with drop-in letters and numbers. An online gallery offers 4,500 free downloadable projects; more complicated projects that involve ancillary components, like motors, will be sold as kits, priced about the same as a video game. ...

The company, Marin said, is also getting ready to release a handheld 3D scanner, based on Intel’s RealSense technology, that is a key step in letting people make prints of…themselves. 

• "Quantum teleportation breakthrough as Nasa reveals 'dark cable' experiment across Calgary"--Daily Mail. "Researchers have achieved quantum teleportation over the farthest distance yet outside of the lab, sending the quantum state of a photon across more than 3.7 miles in an actual metropolitan network."

Other Stuff:

• K-Selection: "Mob rule: Streets of New Zealand town left DESERTED as the country’s toughest gang starts hunting meth dealers after warning them to get out by sunset… or face the consequences "--Daily Mail. Needless to say, it worked.
• The wages of sin socialism: "Man claims son was eaten by fellow inmates during riot in Venezuelan prison"--Fox Latino.
• "What's in the leaked videos of meetings with senior LDS Church leaders?"--Deseret News. Basically, it just shows that the leadership attends presentations by experts to stay abreast of national and international developments.