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Friday, July 20, 2018

July 20, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Beaufort Gyre | Is It Still Stuck?"--Suspicious Observers (2-1/2 min.)
This thing traps fresh water in the Arctic, but is supposed to overturn every 5 to 7 years. It has been stuck for 20. If it were to suddenly release, it would result in a lot of cold whether for the Northern climes, especially Western Europe.


  • TGIF: "Weekend Knowledge Dump- July 20, 2018"--Active Response Training. Lots of good articles, as always, including a couple on the effectiveness of cover (one looks at appliances and furniture in your home, the other looks at the often exaggerated penetrative abilities of the .308). One article in particular deserves your attention: "The surprising factors driving murder rates: income inequality and respect" by Maia Szalavitz at The Guardian. Greg Ellifritz notes that the story is essentially discussing the Gini coefficient, which is a measure of income inequality and is a correlated predictor of homicide. An example, that you might see in news accounts or videos of street fights, are comments that the victim was "disrespecting" the attacker. This often is seen among young black men, but is an issue with any society that places a high value on "honor." From The Guardian article:
        When inequality is high and strips large numbers of men of the usual markers of status – like a good job and the ability to support a family – matters of respect and disrespect loom disproportionately.
           Inequality predicts homicide rates “better than any other variable”, says Martin Daly, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at McMaster University in Ontario and author of Killing the Competition: Economic Inequality and Homicide.
             This includes factors like rates of gun ownership (which also rise when inequality does) and cultural traits like placing more emphasis on “honor” (this, too, turns out to be linked with inequality). “About 60 [academic] papers show that a very common result of greater inequality is more violence, usually measured by homicide rates,” says Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level and co-founder of the Equality Trust.
               According to the FBI, just over half of murders in which the precipitating circumstances were known were set off by what is called the “other argument” – not a robbery, a love triangle, drugs, domestic violence or money, but simply the sense that someone had been dissed.
                When someone bumps into someone on the dance floor, looks too long at someone else’s girlfriend or makes an insulting remark, it doesn’t threaten the self-respect of people who have other types of status the way it can when you feel this is your only source of value.
                    “If your social reputation in that milieu is all you’ve got, you’ve got to defend it,” says Daly. “Inequality makes these confrontations more fraught because there’s much more at stake when there are winners and losers and you can see that you are on track to be one of the losers.”
                     Harold Pollack, co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab, agrees. “If you foreclose [mainstream] opportunities for respect, status and personal advancement, people will find other ways to pursue those things.”
              Obviously, this is not the only predictor of violence, and its not equally attributable to all cultures and ethnic groups. The Japanese have a very high sense of honor, but their murder rate is very low. There is fighting, but it generally is broken up or resolved without police involvement. Steven Pinker noted in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature that the Scottish culture of "honor" was probably a source of increased violence in the South where there were large concentrations of Scottish settlers. 
                       If you openly carry, you are an ambassador for our cause.  Don’t be an ass.  Please.  Just stay home.  Dress appropriately, be nice, be respectful, observe proper rules (don’t play with your gun), and don’t leave retention straps hanging down from your holster.  Work on your holster to make it look like a gentleman is carrying a gun.
                         Do more than just look like a gentleman.  Become a gentleman.  Or stay home.
                             We can be a puritanical lot… “Thou dost forsake the carrying of a G34 with a U-Boat close to thine appendix in favor of the Ba’al and his liking of the .38 snubbie? For shame! Thou art accursed among men! Begone, heretic, and dwell forever in the outer darkness with the other unbelievers and their unnatural desire for the subcompact 9mm!”
                             15 years ago it was .40S&W or GTFO and .223 was good for small dogs and nothing else, now we’re moved on to other things. The music may change, but the song remains the same.
                              After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the green room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys — yes, all men — from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world. After a bit of small talk, I realized they had no interest in the information I had prepared about the future of technology. They had come with questions of their own.
                                  They started out innocuously enough. Ethereum or bitcoin? Is quantum computing a real thing? Slowly but surely, however, they edged into their real topics of concern.
                                   Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis: New Zealand or Alaska? Is Google really building Ray Kurzweil a home for his brain, and will his consciousness live through the transition, or will it die and be reborn as a whole new one? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?”
                                    The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.
                                      This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. ...
                                • "Chuck Pressburg Talks About Combat Shooting"--The Truth About Guns. As I've noted before, shooting is not rocket science, and most any shooter should be able to quickly pick up the fundamentals without having to invest in a class. It is the other topics that go beyond the basics where you will most benefit from training. Pressburg seems to have this philosophy as well, as he states:
                                        For shooting students exhibiting significant inability to exercise any fundamentals, an isolation of flaws and focus on improving them individually should take place. In the DOD we used the “crawl, walk, run” method of teaching and training.
                                         Basic trigger press drills and sight diagnostics are FOUNDATIONAL in nature, but are crawl-level events. The only time they should be brought up with a “grown” professional is when their shooting foundation was built out of sand and they shoot like dog crap.
                                             The Left sings the praises of the “browning of America,” and the Western world as a whole, and looks forward to that glorious day when whites are finally minorities in their own nations with a religious fervor. Why whites becoming a minority in their own homelands is a good thing, and why it is necessary for the precepts of social justice to be fully realized, is never articulated; it’s simply a matter of faith that when the magical day cometh—the Social Justice Judgement Day as it were—the seas will part, an empire will collapse, and peace and tranquility will reign. The expiation of our sins may only be accomplished by a mass blood-letting, the likes of which has been openly, wistfully commented on by no less a personage than televangelist Oprah Winfrey:

                                      As long as people can be judged by the, by the color of their skin, the problem’s not solved…There’s a whole generation, I said this for apartheid South Africa, I said this for my own, you know, community in the South, there are still generations of people, older people, who were born and bred and marinated in it, in that prejudice and racism, and they just have to die.
                                        Read the whole thing.
                                          My counsel to the conferees was simple: be always vigilant, consider yourselves and your families first, and only then worry about the world. Tikkun Olam is all fine and dandy, but to set that messianic task before the imperative of self-preservation is foolishness personified -- or as we say in Yiddish, gantz meshugàs. The many Jews abducted by socialist and communist ideologies are a testimony not only to their folly but to the power of biblical precept -- especially the Book of the prophet Amos who inveighs against those indifferent to the plight of the disadvantaged -- and the influence of Talmudic exhortation. But the world you want to save does not necessarily love you. Therefore, stay alert and temper your ideological extravagances. Don’t listen to me if you are offended, I conceded, but at least listen to your wives and children. Almost immediately, the entire New York assembly rose to a man and conspicuously walked out.
                                          [Reporter]: “You sound proud that you haven’t taken any refugees”

                                          [MP]: “Of course.” ... “…we can be called populists, nationalists, racists…I don’t care. I care about my family and about my country.”
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                                              The Bystander Effect--Fact And Fiction

                                               Greg Ellifritz's most recent Weekend Knowledge Dump  included a link to an article on the bystander effect published at Aeon Magazine a...