Wednesday, December 21, 2016

December 21, 2016: A Quick Run Around the Web

Some music for your enjoyment: Blackmore's Night - "The Circle"

Prepping/Firearms:

Other Stuff:
  • The Berlin attack was another case of a "known wolf": "Revealed: Tunisian asylum seeker, 23, suspected of carrying out Berlin massacre was being tracked by police for months over an earlier terror plot - but they LOST him"--Daily Mail. According to the article, the suspect is a 23 year old Tunisian named Anis Amri, although he has used aliases. The suspect is believed to have entered Europe through Italy with Syrian refugees, but is also described as being in contact with an Islamic network already in Europe. In my mind, one of the most damning items in the news report is this: "The suspect had applied for asylum in Germany and his application was rejected in July. Attempts to deport him to Tunisia failed as he did not have identification papers, and Tunisian authorities disputed whether he was their national." (Underline mine). This is why you shouldn't admit them in the first place.
Of course, the response to the authorities having failed to keep track of this murderer (rather than jailing him until his home country would take him back) is to call for more surveillance authority and power--solely because of the influx of "migrants," Germany is to once again become a police state.
Of course, to the rabbits, the attack is the fault of Germans; at least according a German professor quoted by DW. From the article:
Hentges says that since the threat of radicalization increases when refugees remain isolated, increased prevention and integration measures would provide more adequate security against further attacks than control alone. But one thing remains clear: "There is no such thing as 100 percent safety; nowhere in the world." Politicians must tell that to the people honestly instead of creating hysteria, says the professor.
Lunar lava tubes may potentially serve a role as enclosures for human habitats. Tunnels up to 5000 meters in diameter may exist, lying under 40 to 500 meters (130 ft) or more of basalt with a stable temperature of −20 °C (−4 °F). These natural tunnels provide protection from cosmic ray radiation, meteorites, micrometeorites, and ejecta from impacts. They are shielded from the variations in temperature at the lunar surface, which would provide a stable environment for inhabitants. Lunar lava tubes are typically found along the boundaries between lunar mares and highland regions. This would give ready access to elevated regions for communications, basaltic plains for landing sites and regolith harvesting, as well as underground mineral resources
     Scientists in China claim they’ve created a working prototype of the ‘impossible’ reactionless engine – and they say they’re already testing it in orbit aboard the Tiangong-2 space laboratory.
         The radical, fuel-free EmDrive recently stirred up controversy after a paper published by a team of NASA researchers appeared to show they’d successfully built the technology.
           If the physics-defying concept is brought to reality, it’s said the engine could get humans to Mars in just 10 weeks.
             But now, scientists with the China Academy of Space Technology claim NASA’s results ‘re-confirm’ what they’d already achieved, and have plans to implement it in satellites ‘as quickly as possible.’

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