March 23, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Can appendix carry work for big dudes?"--Lucky Gunner (5-1/2 min.)

Some tips for "big dudes" wanting to carry, including some links to companies that make good AIWB holsters. 

• Greg Ellifritz has another Weekend Knowledge Dump posted, with, as always, great articles on self-defense and firearms. A couple articles in particular I want to point out are: an article on learning to say "no," and three criteria that the author uses; an article from Rory Miller on what he calls "the monkey dance"--the prelude to socialized violence (Miller has a book called Facing Violence which I cannot recommend enough); and an article on how anti-gunners are now using shunning and other forms of social control to advance gun control. There are a lot of other good articles, as well, that are worth your look. And my thanks to Greg for his shout-out about this blog--it is much appreciated.



(Source)

• The Firearm Blog takes a look at the Army's new tungsten core XM1158 5.56 mm ammunition. It's not just green tipped, but super green tipped.

• "Best Rifle Sling For Your Specific Purpose"--Pew Pew Tactical. This is a nice introduction to the basic styles of rifle slings and their uses, including some of the shooting slings (i.e., those slings intended to assist in steadying your rifle when you shoot). I would also point you to the Art of the Rifle blog for more information on using the shooting sling. The author of that blog also sells high quality shooting slings for very reasonable prices.
• "Woundseal for small to medium abrasions: Weekly product Review"--The Survivalist Blog. This product works well for people with clotting issues as to small cuts and abrasions. It is NOT a replacement for Quickclot or similar products.
• "Water & Food (Level 2 Preparedness)"--Modern Survival Blog. By level 2 preparedness, the author means sufficient food and water for each person for an entire month. The author suggests at least 1/2 gallon of water per day just for drinking, and at least a 55-gallon drum of water for all other uses. I think this is too little, especially for someone who is active or during warm/hot weather. But the author also recommends supplementing with a water filter, so that may be why the stores seem a little low. For food storage, the author recommends calculating the type and quantity of food based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet. And don't forget the spices!
• "How to Make Your Own Soda"--Modern Survival Online. I half-jokingly noted recently about the importance of being able to make your own ketchup. This article is in the same vein: making your own soda pop. Believe me, after a week of drinking nothing but water, if you haven't washed out all your electrolytes and gone comatose, you would probably be willing to kill (well, maybe not that extreme) for a some soda pop.
• "Cotton Pad Fire Starter"--Dreams Of Sunsets Over Ochre Dunes. You all should know about using a cotton ball slathered with petroleum jelly makes an excellent fire starter. The author of this article has a bit of refinement: he carries some small cotton cleaning pads and a small tin of petroleum jelly. He smears a small dollop of the petroleum jelly on the pad, and, voilà, a fire starter. (When starting a fire in our fireplace, I just take a half-sheet of paper towel and wipe it through some petroleum jelly as a fire starter). 
• Well, the big international story today is that of another terrorist attack in France. (Stories from The Daily Mail, another from the Daily Mail, the BBC, and Deutsche Welle). The incident occurred near the city of Carcassonne in Southern France. The perpetrator, identified as a Moroccan immigrant, Redouane Lakdim, apparently started his crime spree in Carcossonne by carjacking a vehicle, shooting and killing the driver and injuring the passenger. He then started traveling east out of Carcassonne and shot at some police officers out for a morning jog. He continued into the nearby town of Trebes, where he stormed into a Super U supermarket and took hostages and started making demands. At some point, after screaming 'Allahu Akbar, I'll kill you all', two of the hostages were killed and an unknown number where injured. Police, upon hearing the shots, stormed the store and shot Lakdim dead. 

        As is generally the case in these matters, Lakdim had been flagged by security services for possible radicalization. However, he was not deemed a significant threat. Rather, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb described Lakdim as a "small-time" drug dealer who acted alone. Nevertheless, he was armed with at least one firearms, knives, and a grenade. 

• Meanwhile, back in the United States: "Terrorist is killed after driving through the gates of a California air force base, setting himself on fire and crashing as his vehicle packed with propane tanks burst into flames"--Daily Mail. This poorly executed attack at Travis AFB apparently killed no one but the terrorist. It occurred last night (Wednesday night).
• Stupid is as stupid does: "Florida school shooting students told to wear clear backpacks"--BBC. Talk about a useless program. In addition to the clear backpacks, students will be required to get tightly packed together as they go through metal detectors at limited entrances to the school. It is not clear from the article whether this will be done before they enter the campus, or for each individual building.
• And this will fool who? "Venezuela to knock three zeros off currency amid hyperinflation"--Deutsche Welle. Inflation is expected to top 13,000 percent this year according to the IMF. 
• Diversity is strength: "Pastor Leads Mob of Hundreds in Attack on Venezuelan Refugees in Brazil"--Breitbart. From the article:

        According to local media outlet G1, around 300 residents of the town of Mucajaí in southern Roraima expelled Venezuelans from an abandoned building in an act of protest following the death of 49-year-old Eulis Marinho de Souza, who was allegedly murdered by three Venezuelan migrants.

        The mob reportedly stormed an abandoned school where the migrants were sheltering before setting fire to their possessions and driving the group out of the building. Meanwhile, some belongings such as baskets of food and suitcases of clothes were left behind, while villagers ripped packages of wheat flour and scattered it across the floor.

       “We cannot stand their presence anymore, we want the authorities to do something, there are a lot of robberies and thefts in our city,” said local pastor John Batista, who helped organize the protest.

• End stage socialism: "Unemployed Kenyan Doctors Outraged as Government Imports Cuban Slaves"--Breitbart. According to this article, one of Cuba's sources of foreign funds is a slave trade in doctors. Basically, Cuba signs agreements with poor countries to provide doctors in exchange for cash and/or commodities. The doctors keep only a small percentage of what they earn; essentially, just enough to buy food. The article explains:

          It is unclear how much the Kenyan government will pay Cuba for its doctors, but whatever that amount is, it is a guarantee that the doctors themselves will not see most of it. Cuba keeps 75 percent of a doctor’s salary, netting the Castro regime nearly $8 million a year. Doctors in Cuba make $67 a month, or $804 a year. Abroad, the receive only a “living stipend,” which doctors who have defected allege are barely enough to cover meals. In Brazil, the monthly doctor salary was $927, but they were working unreasonable hours, leaving their families behind, and having no freedom of movement within Brazil.

         “When you leave Cuba for the first time, you discover many things you were blinded to until that moment,” a Cuban doctor in Brazil told the New York Times. “You get tired of being a slave.”

Isn't the purpose of socialism to make us all slaves?

• From the annals of gun control: "Remains of 240 people who were dissolved in barrels of acid and then buried in trenches by a SINGLE hitman known as ‘The Soup Maker’ have been discovered in Mexico as authorities say he could have killed 650"--Daily Mail. 
• Diversity + Proximity = War: "Syria's war of ethnic cleansing: Kurds threatened with beheading by Turkey's allies if they don't convert to extremism"--The Independent. So not much different than Sweden. Anyway, from the article:

As the Turkish army closes in on Afrin and the Syrian army penetrates deeply into the opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta, people in both areas fear that they will be the victims of enforced demographic change. One Kurdish observer in Iraq said that he thought Mr Erdogan, who has claimed that the majority in Afrin is not Kurdish, will “bring in Turkmen and others to replace the Kurdish population."

We've been told by our supposed betters that demographic change is not only good, but necessary. It is nice that The Independent can disagree with that sentiment when it involves non-Europeans. 

• "Discovery of widespread platinum may help solve Clovis people mystery"--Phys.org. This is an article from a year ago that I just came across. Pretty interesting stuff:

         No one knows for certain why the Clovis people and iconic beasts—mastodon, mammoth and saber-toothed tiger - living some 12,800 years ago suddenly disappeared. However, a discovery of widespread platinum at archaeological sites across the United States by three University of South Carolina archaeologists has provided an important clue in solving this enduring mystery.

         The research findings are outlined in a new study released Thursday (March 9) in Scientific Reports, a publication of Nature. The study, authored by 10 researchers, builds on similar findings of platinum - an element associated with cosmic objects like asteroids or comets - found by Harvard University researchers in an ice-core from Greenland in 2013.

       The South Carolina researchers found an abundance of platinum in soil layers that coincided with the "Younger-Dryas," a climatic period of extreme cooling that began around 12,800 ago and lasted about 1,400 years. While the brief return to ice-age conditions during the Younger-Dryas has been well-documented by scientists, the reasons for it and the demise of the Clovis people and animals have remained unclear.

        "Platinum is very rare in the Earth's crust, but it is common in asteroids and comets," says Christopher Moore, the study's lead author. He calls the presence of platinum found in the soil layers at 11 archaeological sites in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina an anomaly.

         "The presence of elevated platinum in archaeological sites is a confirmation of data previously reported for the Younger-Dryas onset several years ago in a Greenland ice-core. The authors for that study concluded that the most likely source of such platinum enrichment was from the impact of an extraterrestrial object," Moore says.

        "Our data show that this anomaly is present in sediments from U.S. archaeological sites that date to the start of the Younger-Dryas event. It is continental in scale—possibly global—and it's consistent with the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial impact took place."

(See also: "Platinum may point to impact theory for Younger Dryas"--Earth Magazine).

• "A star disturbed the comets of the solar system in prehistory"--Sinc. The article reports that "[a]bout 70,000 years ago, when the human species was already on Earth, a small reddish star approached our solar system and gravitationally disturbed comets and asteroids. Astronomers from the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge have verified that the movement of some of these objects is still marked by that stellar encounter."