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Sunday, October 15, 2017

October 15, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Why Are The Penguins Dying?"--Suspicious Observers (6 min.). Some observations concerning the record sea ice in Antarctica and some other inconvenient truths. One to note is that Earth is not the only planet undergoing climate change: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus all exhibits signs of climate change during the same period that the Earth has been warming.


 Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
  • If you haven't already checked it out, take a look at Active Response Training's Weekend Knowledge Dump for this weekend.
  • While 6.5 mm Creedmore is the hottest thing for the general shooting public, competition shooters have been working with the 6 mm Creedmore. In "Exclusive Shootout: 6mm Creedmoor vs. the 6.5," Shooting Times compares the two rounds. Basically, the 6 mm goes everything the 6.5 does, except with less recoil. Even wind drift is about the same, even though the 6.5 uses a 147 grain bullet versus the 110 grain for the 6 mm. Of course, it is possible to get similar performance (albeit with a bit more recoil) from a .243. (See "Six Key Reasons Why John Whidden Uses .243 Win. for Long Range Shooting"--Shooting Sports USA).
  • "So You Want A New AR, huh?"--Brush Beater.  The author discusses  .223, .308, 6.5 Grendel,  and 300 ACC Blackout and why, if you are looking for a general purpose, SHTF rifle, you probably should stick with 5.56/.223. Basically, however, it comes down to a few factors: (1) the .223 is more common (and less expensive) than the 6.5 Grendel or .300 Blackout; (2) the .223 doesn't require special parts like the 6.5 Grendel (different magazines) or the .308 AR (no industry standards); and (3) the 6.5 Grendel uses an inherently weaker bolt face because the lugs have to be machined out to fit the cartridge (the same issue arises with 7.62x39, so if using the latter cartridge, use a weapon designed for it such as the AK).
  • "Five Things You Can Do With a Sweet Potato (That You Hadn’t Thought Of)"--Meridian Magazine. Some recipes for sweet potatoes beyond the standard sweet potato casserole (much as I enjoy it), including a salad, a sweet potato pie, and biscuits. Some of these recipes can be made with canned sweet potatoes, while others call for whole potatoes.
  • "The 26-Yard Hunting Zero"--American Hunter. Another technique for sighting in your rifle at short distances. The author explains:
       ... if you hunt various terrain that offers both short- and long-range shots, here’s a technique that’ll allow you to hold the crosshairs on the vitals of deer-sized game or larger and keep your bullet inside the vital zone out to 280 yards, give or take a few yards depending on your caliber. It’s called point-blank range, and to maximize it you should alter your sight-in range for a particular load, rather than letting your traditional sight-in distance dictate your rifle’s zero.
           Point blank range defined is the range of distances at which you can hold your rifle on the bullseye and never fall in or out of your target’s kill zone. The point blank range for a deer, for example, is generally regarded as six inches. In other words, if you hold dead center on the vitals, your bullet can be 3 inches high or 3 inches low before it slips out of the vital zone. An elk’s vital zone is larger of course—we’ll say 8 inches. But I like to stay with the 6-inch rule of thumb because is allows for some shooter error, an occurrence that you’d be naive to assume doesn’t happen while in field positions shooting at wild game.

      * * *

                  As an example, let’s use a very common hunting round, a .270 Win., loaded by Remington with a 130-grain Premier Accutip boattail bullet that has a .447 Ballistic Coefficient (BC). It’s got a muzzle velocity of 3,060 fps. Ballistically, it falls in line with a whole class of moderately fast calibers. ...
                   Using ballistic software downloaded from Remington.com, I manipulated the zero range input data until it was optimized for the greatest point-blank range. (Another great website for finding maximum point-blank range is ShootersCalculator.com.) I found that by zeroing my rifle in at 26 yards, the .270 will deliver its bullet 2.81 inches high at 100 yards, 2.80 inches high at 200 yards and 2.12 inches high at 250 yards before finally falling out of the 6-inch vital zone at 310 yards. This means that with a 26 yard zero, I can hold dead-center of a deer’s vitals and kill it cleanly from 0 to 310 yards without adjusting my hold.
                     Of course, this is an on-paper estimate, and until you actually shoot your rifle at those distances, you can’t be sure, but I’ve found it to be pretty close. For most rifles, a 25- to 28-yard zero (depending on the caliber’s velocity and bullet’s BC) will maximize its point blank range. My technique for shooting is to zero at 26 yards (if using the .270 noted above), then shade slightly low (an inch or two) when shooting at 100 yards, and hold slightly high at 300. This increases my margin of shooting error, while allowing me to not have to calculate or hold off the animal at 300 yards. I simply see the animal, range it and shoot—out to 310 yards. Any further than that, I can either use my scope ballistic reticle, or know my caliber’s ballistic data and hold over appropriately.
            • "Postural Stability: How To Improve Your Static Hold"--Shooting Sports USA. A discussion of some of the physiology for a successful shooting static (i.e., not moving) stance in target rifle and pistol shooting, but there is valuable information for the general shootist, including:
                      ... Strength is another important consideration. For rifle shooters, endurance and isometric strength are more important than “bulking up.” Strength training that involves high repetition with low weights is preferable to low repetition and higher weights.
                        For pistol shooters, both strength and endurance are important. Of particular importance is strengthening their trapezius, deltoid, rotator cuff and wrist extensors of the dominant arm. Unlike rifle, I have the pistol shooters alternate between high reps, low weight exercises for endurance and high weight, low reps for strengthening. Pistol shooters are very prone to rotator cuff tears from overuse, so this is an important preventive measure.
                  How many of you have heard of water glass?  Chemically, it’s a liquid sodium silicate solution.  Full-strength, it’s a concrete sealer.  But diluted down, it’s been used for over a century to preserve eggs.  You mix one part water glass with ten parts water, and put (washed, fresh) eggs into it, enough to cover the eggs to a depth of about 2 inches.  Kept in a cool place, the eggs will supposedly keep eight months or more.  (We’ve tested them out to five months; thus far, it’s worked a treat!)  The yolks might lose some of their firmness–you probably won’t get “sunny-side up” fried eggs out of them–but scrambled, or as an ingredient in something baked, they’re just fine.  (If you’re really worried about whether they’re good, crack the eggs into a separate bowl one-at-a-time for a sniff test, before you add them to whatever you’re cooking.)  Yes, the water glass is a bit pricey, but at the 10:1 dilution ratio, a little bit goes a pretty long way.

                    Other Stuff: 
                    • "Some Facts About Buying on Amazon That You May Not Know"--Security & Self-Reliance. The author discusses a bit how it works to be a third party seller on Amazon, including that Amazon has a liberal return policy that, while good for the consumer, can be expensive for the seller who has to bear the costs of a return. This can be a problem with fraudulent returns. The author explains:
                    I suspect that some buyers will buy multiple items at the same time and keep the one that they like best knowing that they can use the “hassle-free” return policy to get a complete refund for the unwanted items.I also suspect that these buyers are under the impression that “Amazon can afford it” and they just don’t understand that they are most likely dealing with a small business and taking a bite out of a family’s income by making a false return claim.
                    Anyway, an interesting read for anyone who has thought about trying to sell through Amazon.
                    • Some inconvenient truths:
                    • "Thousands of penguin chicks starve in Antarctica"--AFP (via Yahoo). The article reports that "[m]ass starvation has wiped out thousands of penguin chicks in Antarctica, with unusually thick sea ice forcing their parents to forage further for food...."
                           Scientists have warned the ocean creatures are producing large amounts of the strongest greenhouse gases - methane and nitrous oxides - from the bacteria in their guts.
                                This methane bubbles out of the water contributing to global warming as it as 28 times greater warming potential than carbon dioxide.
                        Over the last few weeks there have been a couple mornings where the Schuylkill Expressway was jammed and I had to take my alternative route through the 30 Blocks of Squalor. I hadn’t had this inspiring dystopian experience all summer. There is nothing like West Philly when the punks, punkettes, and future prison convicts finish a summer of not working, not reading, and not picking up the trash in their neighborhoods, go back to West Philly High and not learn again. The observations will be rehashed in a stream of consciousness format, as West Philly is a smorgasbord of squalor, sordidness, filth, apathy, crime and epic government incompetence.
                        • Las Vegas Update:
                                In the twentieth century, American liberalism was defined by a very specific ideological mix: advocacy of freedom of speech, political freedom, and resistance to government regulation in the field of personal morality and culture—combined with advocacy of broad and ever-growing government control over the economy. 
                        * * *
                                 At the height of liberalism, in the early 1970s, Ayn Rand summed up the contradiction this way: “The liberals see man as a soul freewheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe—but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread.” Obviously, you can’t be both of these things at the same time. This strict separation of ideas from action, of the private from the public falls apart the moment you try to apply it to reality. What’s the point of being free to think if you’re not free to act on your thinking? And how can we say that private thinking and private preferences have no effect on others, when they clearly influence the way people act?
                                   So the liberals either had to return to the idea of individual rights that protect our freedom of action in all of life, or they had to resolve the contradiction by calling on government to regulate everything. Guess which one they chose.

                              * * *

                                        Just as Marxism created a whole system for finding real and imagined harms to be regulated in the realm of economics, the extension of Marxism to race and gender created a whole system for finding real and imagined harms to be regulated in the realm of ideas, behavior, and culture. It invoked a whole system of “triggers” and “microaggressions” that marginalize and exclude certain victim groups, even if the people in that system are not conscious of any intent to do so. Therefore, we have to be constantly on the lookout for the harm caused by ideas and root out all of these thought crimes.

                                  * * *

                                            ... With it goes liberalism’s distinction between ideas and action and its pretense of constructing some kind of special defense of intellectual freedom while controlling everything else.
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                                    Bombs & Bants Episode 149

                                     My "2 minutes of gun talk in 1 minute" segment was somewhat scrambled, so let me summarize the point I was trying to make. I was ...