Wednesday, October 25, 2017

October 25, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"How To Work With Chainsaws"--Wranglerstar (14 min.)


Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
Winchester representatives at the booth confirmed that the ammunition was indeed XM1153 Special Purpose, and that it was based on the T-Series [i.e., the Ranger ammunition], but re-engineered for the US Army’s specifications. This makes me wonder if the new Special Purpose ammnition is more similar to the older Black Talon round, which uses the same basic design as the T-Series but which is engineered to expand slightly less while giving greater penetration. Or, possibly, the Army had other requirements and this is not the case; I am just speculating.
  • "Our Resistance Library: Arming You Physically + Philosophically"--Ammo.com. The folks at Ammo.com have put together a collection of articles on everything from explaining the Second Amendment and the history of various patriot flags, to emergency preparedness and explaining different types of shot (for shotguns) and bullets. I'm still looking through it all, but, so far, disaster preparation articles appear to be pretty comprehensive. Check it out. I'll be adding this to my list of Useful Links as well.
  • "'We Have Two Americas:'The Gun Debate According to Michael Owens"--American Digest (H/t Woodpile Report). Owens writes: "... we don’t really have a single America with a moderately high rate of gun deaths. Instead, we have two Americas, one of which has very high rates of gun ownership but very low murder rates, very comparable to the rest of the First World democracies such as those in western & northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea. The other America has much lower rates of gun ownership but much, much higher murder rates, akin to violent third world countries."
  • "50 simulations of the ‘Really Big One’ show how a 9.0 Cascadia earthquake could play out"--University of Washington. From the news release: 
            Off the Oregon and Washington coast, the Juan de Fuca oceanic plate is slowly moving under the North American plate. Geological clues show that it last jolted and unleashed a major earthquake in 1700, and that it does so roughly once every 500 years. It could happen any day.
               Wirth’s project ran simulations using different combinations for three key factors: the epicenter of the earthquake; how far inland the earthquake will rupture; and which sections of the fault will generate the strongest shaking.
                 Results show that the intensity of shaking can be less for Seattle if the epicenter is fairly close to beneath the city. From that starting point, seismic waves will radiate away from Seattle, sending the biggest shakes in the direction of travel of the rupture.
                   “Surprisingly, Seattle experiences less severe shaking if the epicenter is located just beneath the tip of northwest Washington,” Wirth said. “The reason is because the rupture is propagating away from Seattle, so it’s most affecting sites offshore. But when the epicenter is located pretty far offshore, the rupture travels inland and all of that strong ground shaking piles up on its way to Seattle, to make the shaking in Seattle much stronger.”

            * * *

                      Overall, the results confirm that coastal areas would be hardest hit, and locations in sediment-filled basins like downtown Seattle would shake more than hard, rocky mountaintops. But within that general framework, the picture can vary a lot; depending on the scenario, the intensity of shaking can vary by a factor of 10. But none of the pictures is rosy.
                Read the whole thing.


                Other Stuff:
                • "Paddock brother arrested"--Vox Popoli. He is citing an article from The Independent reporting that Paddock's brother has been arrested for possession of material related to child sex abuse.
                         Moreover, according to what is arguably the next-best measure of class, household income, Trump supporters didn’t look overwhelmingly “working class” during the primaries. To the contrary, many polls showed that Trump supporters were mostly affluent Republicans. For example, a March 2016 NBC survey that we analyzed showed that only a third of Trump supporters had household incomes at or below the national median of about $50,000. Another third made $50,000 to $100,000, and another third made $100,000 or more and that was true even when we limited the analysis to only non-Hispanic whites. If being working class means being in the bottom half of the income distribution, the vast majority of Trump supporters during the primaries were not working class.

                           But what about education? Many pundits noticed early on that Trump’s supporters were mostly people without college degrees. There were two problems with this line of reasoning, however. First, not having a college degree isn’t a guarantee that someone belongs in the working class (think Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg). And, second, although more than 70 percent of Trump supporters didn’t have college degrees, when we looked at the NBC polling data, we noticed something the pundits left out: during the primaries, about 70 percent of all Republicans didn’t have college degrees, close to the national average (71 percent according to the 2013 Census). Far from being a magnet for the less educated, Trump seemed to have about as many people without college degrees in his camp as we would expect any successful Republican candidate to have.
                  In short, Trump won because of overwhelming support from white, middle-class men: businessmen, tradesmen, and professionals. 
                  • You may have seen articles discussing Sen. Jeff Flake's announcement that he won't run for re-election. In his address to the Senate, he pandered to the never-Trumpers and the Democrats. However, as The Atlantic makes clear, Flake's problem is that he had become a dedicated globalist. From the article: 
                  Flake’s decision not to run for reelection was, in fact, largely an acknowledgment of reality: He was unlikely to defeat a primary challenge ahead of the 2018 Senate election. He said that he doubted he could win while remaining committed to core beliefs like support for free markets and immigration.
                  Stephen Kruiser's explanation is more succinct: "Flake was a strong conservative when he was in the House. When he got to the Senate, he decided to be John McCain's 'Mini-Me' and has borne little, if any, resemblance to his former self."

                  2 comments:

                  1. Re: "Census Bureau: ... Don’t Speak English at Home; 35.6% in Texas."

                    They don't speak English in public or the workplace either. The children are usually bilingual, and sometimes end up acting as interpreters for their non-English speaker parents.

                    ReplyDelete
                    Replies
                    1. I've seen that on occasion as well. Until he moved away, my youngest boys were good friends with a neighbor boy who often translated for his younger cousin and his grandparents who only spoke Spanish. Given that the cousin didn't know any English, I assume that at least his cousin's family only spoke Spanish in the home.

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                  Review and 1,000 Round Test of the Beretta 80x

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