June 11, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Solar Health Effects, Volcano, Major Storms | S0 News Jun.10.2019"--Suspicious Observers (6-1/2 min.) The relevant part begins at 1:25, and is about the impact of solar weather on heart health because of disruptions to the electrical signals. It reminds me of the following from D&C 88:89-91:

89      For after your testimony [i.e., the Church's missionary efforts] cometh the testimony of earthquakes, that shall cause groanings in the midst of her, and men shall fall upon the ground and shall not be able to stand.

90      And also cometh the testimony of the voice of thunderings, and the voice of lightnings, and the voice of tempests, and the voice of the waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds.

91      And all things shall be in commotion; and surely, men’s hearts shall fail them; for fear shall come upon all people.

• It's Tuesday, and so time for another Woodpile Report. Lot's of good stuff, but here are a few things that stuck out in particular:

General Ambrose Burnside, from whose name we get the word "sideburns"

• Ol' Remus linked to an article about the Air Force allowing a Sikh airman to wear a turban, beard and unshorn hair while serving. While seemingly radical now, historically Empires have permitted their various ethnic troops to wear ethnic headgear (e.g., the British with their colonial forces). Even up until the First World War, however, facial hair was the norm among western troops (see, e.g., the article, "From 1860-1916 the British Army required every soldier to have a mustache," at Business Insider). That changed with the advent of chemical weapons and need to wear gas masks. Thus, troops became religious about shaving, and made sure that their hair was cut to what we would today consider a "neat" look, so their masks would be able to seal. 

• Ol' Remus also cites an article by Angelo Codevilla discussing the current judicial impasse, what with liberal judges willing to grossly exceed their authority and jurisdiction to block the Trump administration from making many of the changes demanded by voters. There is body of like-minded conservative judges in the wings that will to the same to the next liberal president, and so we are stymied by unelected judges. It presents a type of Gordian Knot, and Codevilla suggests a similar solution: just ignore or, by legislation, limit the judicial branch's overreaching. 

• Finally, he links to an article about the Army's invention of a new bolt and breach mechanism to allow vastly higher pressures (and thus velocities) from small arms. As the diagram below shows, the bolt literally screws into the barrel extension.

And to make sure that cases can contain the pressure and extract without sticking, there is a separate collet that slides in place around the casing when it is loaded. According to the article, the Army’s new 24-inch prototype barrel produced muzzle velocities of 4,600 to 5,750 feet per second. 

• "Pistol Choice for a Shooting Class"--Active Response Training. Greg Ellifritz answers a reader's question about selecting a pistol for a high ammo count (more than 500 rounds) firearms class. The question was whether the reader should use his carry gun (a Sig P365) or use a larger pistol (e.g., Sig P320) even though it is not what he normally carries. Ellifritz's answer may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but he recommends the larger pistol just because you don't want to deal with all the problems that will come from shooting a lot of rounds through a small pistol in that short period of time.
• "Does a Suppressed Pistol Sound like a Nail Gun?"--Guns America.  Only if you are also wearing quality hearing protection. Most gunshots are 160+ db; a suppressed .45 pistol is 135 db (still above the pain threshold); and a nail gun comes in at 100 db.
• Gun control in action: "Mali: Nearly 100 die in attack on Dogon village"--DW. Per the article, "[a] survivor of the attack said that some 50 men had arrived on motorbikes and in pickups and killed residents indiscriminately." The attackers are believed to have been Fulani herders because of recent tensions between the two groups of people. The attackers reportedly used automatic weapons. Of course, Mali has strict gun control: automatic and semiautomatic "assault" weapons are outlawed and other firearms require a license from the government.

• Related: Speaking of gun control failures, Australia, last week, suffered its second deadliest mass shooting since 1996. Four people were killed and another injured. The shooter used an illegal pump action shotgun. As the article notes, most pump-action weapons were banned after the Port Arthur shooting in 1996. 

• They want ALL of your guns: "Eric Swalwell Has a Plan for Handguns Once AR-15s Are Confiscated"--Breitbart. From the article:

     Cupp said: “You are the only candidate who is calling for a confiscation of guns. You say you want to ban and buy back every single assault weapon in America. You’ve touted Australia as a model of how gun confiscation works.”

    She added, “Gun control advocates often say no one is coming to take your guns away, [but] you say, ‘Yes I am.’ And that is refreshingly honest.”

    Swalwell contrasted himself with the rest of the Democrat field, saying: “Other candidates have called for an “assault weapons” ban, but they only want to ban future manufacturing, and future sales. And I think if you recognize that an “assault weapon” shouldn’t be made any more in America, why don’t you just get to the point where you say ‘Those that are here, shouldn’t be here.’ That’s where I”m at.”

* * *

    Swalwell made clear he also has a plan for handguns, but he is focused on getting rid of “assault weapons” first.

• "PRAGER: Why So Many Mass Shootings? Ask The Right Questions And You Might Find Out"--Daily Wire. From the article:

       Yet, America had plenty of guns when its mass murder rate was much lower. Grant Duwe, a Ph.D. in criminology and director of research and evaluation at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, gathered data going back 100 years in his 2007 book, "Mass Murder in the United States: A History."

     Duwe's data reveal:

     In the 20th century, every decade before the 1970s had fewer than 10 mass public shootings. In the 1950s, for example, there was one mass shooting. And then a steep rise began. In the 1960s, there were six mass shootings. In the 1970s, the number rose to 13. In the 1980s, the number increased 2 1/2 times, to 32. And it rose again in the 1990s, to 42. As for this century, The New York Times reported in 2014 that, according to the FBI, "Mass shootings have risen drastically in the past half-dozen years."

     Given the same ubiquity of guns, wouldn't the most productive question be what, if anything, has changed since the 1960s and '70s? Of course it would. And a great deal has changed. America is much more ethnically diverse, much less religious. Boys have far fewer male role models in their lives. Fewer men marry, and normal boy behavior is largely held in contempt by their feminist teachers, principals and therapists. 

Also:

Regarding ethnic diversity, the countries that not only have the fewest mass murders but the lowest homicide rates as well are the least ethnically diverse — such as Japan and nearly all European countries. So, too, the American states that have homicide rates as low as Western European countries are the least ethnically and racially diverse (the four lowest are New Hampshire, North Dakota, Maine and Idaho). ...

• "Legislators Introduce Bill Mandating Safe Storage of Firearms"--Outdoor Life. The Connecticut Congressional delegation, U.S. Reps. Rosa DeLauro, Joe Courtney and John Larson, and Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, all Democrats, have announced that they will be introducing federal legislation to require firearms be "safely" stored and kept out of the hands of children. Ostensibly this is for child protection. However, in researching each of these individuals, I discovered that they all support abortion and public funding of the same. Thus, we can see that they are not really motivated by a desire to preserve the lives of children. And I doubt any of them have pushed bills to protect children from swimming pools. No, the real factor is that "safe storage" laws will make it more expensive and difficult for persons to own and access firearms. This is just anti-gun legislation masquerading as a public health issue.
• "Extending A Barrel's Life"--Guns & Ammo. As the article explains:

Barrels die because the area in the bore where the rifling begins, called the “throat,” erodes from the effects of heat and pressure. As the distance between a bullet that is seated in the chamber and the rifling grows, it becomes harder and harder for the bullet to remain straight prior to engaging the rifling. Once it starts to yaw or twist in the bore prior to hitting the rifling, accuracy quickly goes downhill.

Consequently, the primary factor is to avoid using high pressure and/or high velocity loads, or loads that use a lot of powder (and thus flame temperature) relative to the size of the projectile. On the other hand, the article reports on research that shows that "the chemical reaction between the powder and the barrel steel was a bigger driver of throat erosion than the flame temperature associated with the powder type." The author continues:

The U.S. Army’s Special Forces Sniper Course (SFSC) states that barrel life for a .300 Win. Mag.loaded with a 190-­grain bullet (with about 67 grains of powder behind it) is 1,200 rounds. Dave Emary, one of the lead designers of the 6.5 PRC while he was at Hornady — now a Guns & Ammo contributor — said that the barrel life of the 6.5 PRC loaded with a 140-­grain bullet with about 55 grains of powder is 1,400 to 1,600 rounds. My personal experience with the 6.5 Creedmoor using a 140-­grain bullet and 41 grains of powder sees barrel life hovering around 3,000 rounds.

Other recommendations are to use heavy barrels that can absorb more heat, and let the barrel cool between shot strings.

• "Police Response to Virginia Beach Shooting Slowed by Electronic Security Doors"--The Truth About Guns. People forget that security and safety equipment and protocols are generally a two-edged sword. The doors that safely lock out criminals can also lock out rescuers. The vest or body armor that protects you against a bullet wound can slow you down, or overload or overtax you. The means by which you secure a gun from unauthorized access also slow you down when you are trying to access a firearm for self-defense.
• This will be useful: "Old School .308 Winchester Match Loads"--Proven Reloads and Handloads. I have to admit that I've been interested into getting into long (or, at least, longer) range shooting. Not just because of the attention and interest over the last several years, but because I have a friend who, together with his father-in-law, have been involved in long-range hunting and shooting for the last few years. For the long-range hunting, my friend and his father-in-law have been shooting a .300 Win Mag., and their newest acquisition is a 6.5 Creedmore. And it is so tempting--oh, so tempting--to get something similar. But, then common sense smacked me upside the head and told me to stop it. I don't have 1,000 yard plus rifles, but I've some hunting rifles that can probably do fine out to 700 or 800 yards (and I know a couple places to shoot where I can put out targets that far), and allow me to learn the basics--and at far less than the price of a new rifle system. One of those is a bolt action .308 which has recently been adorned with a Lyman scope using a mil-dot reticle. I'll learn the basics using it and then, if it is something that I can do and still interests me, I'll look at buying a more capable rifle.
• "How to Rack a Pistol's Slide"--NRA Family. An excerpt:

       With the pistol centered in the web of your hand-between your thumb and index finger-the barrel should point as an extension of the hand as if pointing at an object with your index finger. Your hand-eye coordination combined with your natural ability to point gets the muzzle on target. The second part of the equation is to be able to reach and pull the trigger without shifting your grip. If you can't reach and pull the trigger, you need to consider a pistol with a smaller grip, a shorter trigger reach or both.

      This parlays into gripping the slide while holding the frame in order to retract the slide rearward, locking the action open for safety, cleaning, etc. Two things to consider are the slide's available gripping surfaces and their compatibility with your hand size, along with the resistance of the recoil spring and hammer (if the pistol is so equipped) to the movement of the slide.

     Most semi-auto pistols have slide serrations, or gripping surfaces, just aft of the ejection port on either side for the purpose of manipulating the slide. The idea is to place the base of the thumb on one side of these gripping surfaces and the fingertips on the other for sufficient purchase on the slide. Many people with average hand strength simply grip the frame as they would when firing to hold it stationary while gripping the slide and pulling it back fully to load a round, clear the chamber or lock the action open.

     If this is difficult for you, I suggest you hold the pistol close to your body-ensuring the muzzle is pointed in a safe direction-and push the frame forward with the shooting hand (finger off the trigger), while pulling the slide rearward with the non-shooting hand. Such a motion is similar to tearing a cloth or piece of paper in half.

• Related: "Arthritis Tips: How to Load & Unload Semi-Autos"--NRA Family. The author suggests:

Racking the slide to move the first round out of the magazine and into the chamber is the second goal. This task can be modified through changes in technique or equipment. The overhand grip technique minimizes joint stress and increases muscle activation by using nearly the entire hand to grasp the slide. For the right-handed shooter, that means resting the left hand across the back of the slide, making sure to stay clear of the ejection port. Grip force is multiplied by placing the finger tips and the base of the palm over the cocking serrations on either side of the slide. Part of this technique is to not rely solely on the left hand (in this example) to move the slide rearward. Make the movement a combined action by also driving the right hand forward. This way, the larger muscle groups of the chest, shoulders and arms can be brought into play.

• Last week, Greg Ellifritz had linked to this article, "Terminal Ballistics: How Bullets Wound and Kill," which gives a good history of wounding theory and testing up through Martin Fackler. Fackler essentially identified two general mechanisms of injury: (1) permanent wound channels, caused by crushing damage, fragmentation, etc., and (2) temporary cavitation which is essentially shock waves that can distort or damage organs. Handguns lack the power to cause sufficient cavitation to wound, and generally lack the velocity to fragment. Last year, however, I collected some articles on wound ballistics ("Roundup On Handgun Ballistics and Effectiveness"), which included some more recent research by Michael Courtney and Amy Courtney which had identified a third factor--not really "wounding" but more "disabling"--which was stress waves or amplified systemic pressure. Essentially, spikes in blood pressure or pressure waves impacting the brain or other nerves can cause temporary incapacitation. 
• Sometimes it's enough to display a weapon: "Criminals Often Carry Ineffectual Guns that are Broken, Unloaded, or Toys"--Ammo Land. The author begins his article by relating an April 2019 incident where an armed robber tried to rob a convenience store with a .22 revolver that did not work; the clerk shot the robber, however. The author then notes some research by Greg Ellifritz that found that 41% of the weapons his department seized from criminals were completely non-functional because they were broken, unloaded, or loaded with the wrong caliber. It is also estimated that 15% of all robberies were committed with imitation guns.

"Archery FAQ: How to start with Thumb Release?"--Armin Hirmer (16 min.)

• You may think you are tough, but are you this tough? "Hiker fights off a bear by biting off part of its TONGUE as it attacks him in Russian forest"--Daily Mail. The article reports that the bear began mauling his face and stomach, so the hiker, Nikolai Irgit, bit down on the bear's tongue, separating a piece and causing the bear to run off. 
• "Catholic Church rejects use of gender identity theory in education"--DW. The article reports:

      The Vatican released a 30-page document on Monday, titled "Male and Female he created them," which rejected the idea that people can change their gender. The document said that the notion of gender being determined by personal feelings rather than biology was an attempt to "annihilate nature."

     The document was issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education, which oversees Catholic education policy, as a guide for Catholic schools on how to approach answering questions from pupils about gender identity.

• A reader sends: "HUNDREDS OF ILLEGALS FROM EBOLA-RIDDEN CONGO DUMPED IN TEXAS, 350 MORE ON THE WAY"--Info Wars. Specifically, they are being dumped into San Antonio. From the article:

      After being placed in San Antonio, the illegal immigrants are bussed to a destination of their choice by local charities who spend “roughly $14,000 a week on bus tickets.”

In other words, they will be scattered to the winds across the country. Also, this is a new phenomena:

     Last weekend, a group of more than 100 illegals from Angola, Cameroon and Congo were filmed wading through the Rio Grande River and entering the United States.

    In a statement, CBP said, “Agents have encountered 182 large groups (100+ individuals) across the SW border this fiscal year. This is the first large group apprehended in Del Rio Sector this FY and the first large group apprehended on the SW border this FY consisting entirely of African nationals.”

Meanwhile, the opposite is occurring in Europe, which is receiving more Central and South American immigrants: "EU migrant numbers increase 15 per cent with arrivals from Venezuela and Colombia behind the surge despite a fall in numbers crossing the Mediterranean"--Daily Mail. 

• Related: "TSA: Americans Need Papers To Fly, But Not Illegal Aliens"--Town Hall. While we have to use a government approved identification (to be even more onerous next year), the TSA will allow illegals to board planes with merely a "Notice to Appear" form requiring them to appear at for an immigration court hearing. It would be like you or me using a traffic ticket as identification.

• "Dramatic video shows illegal immigrants streaming into the U.S. as group that's raising money to build border wall claims it filmed 1,000 this weekend - including one packing a gun - as Trump threatens Mexico with tariffs unless it stems the flow"--Daily Mail. More video here.

• Related: "Report: Islamic State Terrorist Claims Jihadis Planned to Cross U.S.-Mexico Border"--Breitbart.

      The report is based on testimony from Abu Henricki, an ISIS terrorist with dual citizenship in Canada and Trinidad. Henricki said he traveled to the Islamic State’s “caliphate” in Syria to serve as a front-line fighter for the terror state, but his poor health kept him on the sidelines.

     In late 2016, he claims the Islamic State’s intelligence service asked him to become part of a special unit of Trinidadians that would be sent into Mexico via Puerto Rico, cross the U.S. border, and carry out attacks on financial targets like Wall Street.

• Related: "MEXICAN MEDDLING IN OUR ELECTIONS"--Front Page Magazine. The article is mostly about the current Mexican president's statements that Mexicans and others have a "right" to migrate to the United States, and that his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, assisted the Hillary Clinton campaign. However, there is also this interesting tid-bit:

Last month, President Trump hinted that he would use the “tremendous powers” of the Insurrection Act to deport illegal immigrants.  The 1807 measure gives the president authority to act against “unlawful obstruction or rebellion” within the United States. So the president is holding that in reserve if tariffs and other measures fail.

• Related: Last week I'd noted that Mexico could not control migration through it from Central America because it was, essentially, a failed state. Apparently picking up on the same article I had spotted about the amount of territory controlled by drug cartels in Mexico, Peter Grant (Bayou Renaissance Man) explores this topic in greater detail in his piece, "Central America's 'failed states' can't control illegal alien migration." An excerpt:

What this means is that Central American government promises to control illegal migration to, and into, the USA are worthless.  Even if they wanted to, they can't possibly fulfil those promises, because those governments are not in control of their own nations.  They're playing at being governments.  The real power - the power of life or death, the power to allow someone to make a living or force them to starve - comes from the proceeds of crime.  When criminals are able to enforce their will, and intimidate or even kill the police and other authorities who try to intervene, that's real power.  It's power the local populace can hear, and see, and feel, and experience every day.  If some government minister in his nice gated community in a distant capital decrees otherwise, where is his power to actually implement his decrees?  In practice, it doesn't exist.

• A reminder of what we are going to be importing: "80 murders in just a few hours on Friday, Saturday"--Mexico News Daily. The article begins: "There were at least 70 murders committed in 14 states on Friday and Saturday, not taking into account 11 bags of human remains found in Jalisco." Also: "The first four months of 2019 was more violent than the same period of any other year on record, with 11,221 homicides. Since President López Obrador took office on December 1, 14,510 people have been murdered."
• A reminder of what we have lost: "High Trust Societies, Low Trust Societies, Red Dawn, and Castro"--Wilder Wealthy & Wise. The author points out:

     High trust societies produce wealth.  Polite children.  People who act honorably.  They have stable governments with an emphasis on rights for common men.  People pay their taxes, and act together.

     Low trust societies are characterized by poor social trust.  High theft rates.  Low wealth.  Their governments are often stable, because they’re collective and totalitarian.  At least the election results aren’t in doubt.  How can you doubt an election where the winner gets 98% of the vote?

• Obama's foreign policy caught in action: "Iran-linked terrorists caught stockpiling explosives in north-west London"--The Telegraph. The article reports:

      Terrorists linked to Iran were caught stockpiling tonnes of explosive materials on the outskirts of London in a secret British bomb factory, The Telegraph can reveal.

     Radicals linked to Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant group, stashed thousands of disposable ice packs containing ammonium nitrate - a common ingredient in homemade bombs.

     The plot was uncovered by MI5 and the Metropolitan Police in the autumn of 2015, just months after the UK signed up to the Iran nuclear deal. Three metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate was discovered - more than was used in the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and damaged hundreds of buildings.

• Since we are on the topic of the religion of peace: "Ramadan 2019 Deadlier than 2018: Taliban Responsible for over 40% of Nearly 2,000 Casualties"--Breitbart. 
• "Islamic State is focusing on subcontinent and India in particular"--WIONews.

The attempts to penetrate Pakistan and Afghanistan failed due to the lack of space and none of the other radical extremist groups willing to yield ground. The IS obviously has succeeded in ensuring trust deficit with other radical groups affiliated to Islam. It now appears to have changed its strategy of a direct entry to the heart of the subcontinent and possibly decided to enter it in right earnest through the periphery; Sri Lanka’s territory and vulnerable minority Muslim population facilitate this entry to the southern region of India. Indian intelligence agencies have been warning for some time that areas in Kerala and Tamil Nadu have been witnessing increasing radicalisation. The IS was also probably keeping its eyes and ears open particularly due to the large footprint of expatriates in the Gulf. 

• They really do hate you: "Melinda Gates Bashes ‘White Guys,’ Says She’ll Discriminate Against Them"--The Federalist. Per the article, Gates, who is funding a venture capital organization, specifically said in a Forbes interview that some criteria for how she invests in startups are race and sex. Also, "[s]he clearly says she preferences women and non-whites over men and white people, specifically for these immutable characteristics that have nothing inherently to do with business success." 

• Related: "Seattle Yoga Teacher Offers 'Undoing Whiteness' Class"--PJ Media. The article reports that "This spring, Humpf publicized an 'Undoing Whiteness' yoga class at Rainier Beach Yoga, geared toward white people wishing to 'unpack the harmful ways white supremacy is embedded' in their 'body, mind and heart.'" 

• A literal ball buster: "Florida woman, 21, 'choked her boyfriend and squeezed his genitals until they bled' during heated argument"--Daily Mail. She's even smirking in her booking photos.
• "The Age of Pelagius"--Christianity Today. Pelagius was a 4th Century Christian monk who taught that "[i]f individuals worked hard enough and deployed their talents wisely enough, they could indeed be perfect," and "that individuals could use their free choice to adopt their own purposes, to fix their own destinies—to create themselves, if you like." A more modern rendition is that of former Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote in his decision in the 1992 case of Casey v. Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” As you might guess, Pelagius was very popular with the wealthy and powerful of his time. Why? The author explains:

     He validated their privilege and their power.

     Because if freedom means choice among options, then the people with the most choices are the most free. And that means the rich. And if salvation is about achievement, then those with the most accolades are righteous, and that means the elite and the strong. A Pelagian society is one that celebrates the wealthy, prioritizes the powerful, rewards the privileged. And for too long now, that has described modern America.

And today?

     The truth is, the people at the top of our society have built a culture and an economy that work mainly for themselves. Our cultural elites look down on the plain virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice, things like humility and faithfulness. They celebrate instead self-promotion, self-discovery, self-aggrandizement.

     And then when industry ships jobs overseas, they say, workers should find another trade. Capital must be allocated to its most efficient use. When workers without college degrees can’t get a good job, they say that’s their fault. They should have gone to college.

     Now, I rather suspect that if globalization threatened America’s tech industry or banking sector, our elites would sing a very different tune. We would hear how these industries are the lifeblood of the American economy and must be protected at all cost.

     And that’s just the point. The elites assume their interests are vital while dismissing others. They assume their value preferences should prevail, while denigrating the loves and loyalties of Middle America. That’s the nature of elitism.

     And at the end of the day, this hierarchy and this elitism threaten our common liberty. The steady erosion of working-class jobs and working-class life means, for millions of Americans, losing respect. It means losing their voice. It means losing their standing as citizens in this nation.

• Related: "Why the concentration of wealth is so big a concern"--Bayou Renaissance Man. He raises two points: the concentration of wealth means that there is less money flowing through the economy, but it is locked up in assets or bank accounts of the wealthy; and it breeds resentment that can lead to social unrest. We saw this during the Great Depression. Maynard Keynes great theory about the cause of the Depression was that the movement of money had declined significantly, so the only way to resolve the Depression was for government to increase spending on things that would get money into the pockets of the working class, and thus stimulate spending and expand the economy. 

• Related: "How A Mysterious Tech Billionaire Created Two Fortunes—And A Global Software Sweatshop"--Forbes (2018). The alternative title to this probably should be how to alienate aspiring elites. The "mysterious" billionaire is Joe Liemandt. While Liemandt likes to keep out of the public spot-light, that is not true of his majordomo, Andy Tryba. First, some history. Liemandt first made his fortune by founding the software firm, Trilogy. 

     After the dot-com crash, Trilogy faded from view, but from its ranks numerous successful tech companies, including Nutanix and SendGrid, were spawned. It also played a big part in Austin’s emergence as a technology hub. Like others with dot-com fortunes, Liemandt dropped off The Forbes 400 in 2001. He stopped giving press interviews, outsourced Trilogy’s U.S. workforce and took his public company private. Most assumed Liemandt had burned out, but nothing could be farther from the truth.

     Liemandt had seen the future and decided to get out in front of it. In 2006 he quietly began building an enterprise software empire where innovation and growth take a back seat to sheer profitability. 

     Using his closely held ESW Capital, Liemandt began buying dozens of business-software firms with values ranging from $10 million to $250 million. Ever heard of Nextance, Infopia, Kayako or Exinda? Not many have, but these are the types of firms that run things like customer service and document management, humming in the background of an untold number of businesses.

     Liemandt’s team was on a quest for the regular income streams associated with sticky software maintenance contracts. To cut costs, R&D and employee benefits were to be gutted. And as a sweetener, he began assembling a patent-litigation war chest. Through one of his holdings, Liemandt has sued 20 companies, ranging from SAP to Sears and Toyota. He’s currently suing Ford for $300 million. 

 And now?

Tryba argues that the current cloud wage for a C++ programmer, for example, is $15 an hour. That’s what Amazon pays its warehouse workers. Crossover, which is actually the recruiting wing of ESW, has amassed an army of 5,000 workers in 131 countries from Ukraine to Pakistan to Egypt. In the past 12 years, ESW has quietly acquired some 75 software companies, mostly in the U.S., and it exports as many as 150 high-tech jobs every week.

• "Get Ready for a Paradigm Shift on Russia, Climate Change, Everything You Think You Know..."--Richard Fernandez at PJ Media. Fernandez talks about why the elites are so often wrong. He begins with the failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. The presumption of the growth and viability of the Soviet Union came about as the result of a classified1950's CIA report on Soviet economic growth. Because the report was classified, it could not be critiqued and, thus, became inherited wisdom. Until 1985, when a new report was circulated to senior Reagan Administration officials showing that Soviet economic growth was at zero. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and there was a paradigm shift. 

       Fernandez also spends some time on predictions made at the first Earth Day in 1970 by various population and environmental scientists ... none of which came true. Although these pronouncements weren't secret, they rested on supposed virtues--the sacred, you might say.

Arguments founded on secret knowledge and virtue have the special advantage of being where critics cannot touch them. They are in a separate dimension beyond falsification until a paradigm shift — another of Kuhn's concepts — overthrows them at the very end.

A paradigm shift is often the result of scientists working at the fringe of that paradigm, performing research that most other researchers feel is a little misguided, or a dead end. ... Kuhn believed that paradigm shifts are instigated by accumulated evidence within a paradigm – “anomalies” – that are not adequately supported by current theories. When these anomalies can no longer be ignored, the shift can be quick and total.

This explains why officialdom found it so hard to anticipate the fall of the Soviet Union; the old paradigm was in the way. 

• Reminder: One of the predictions from the very first Earth Day in 1970 was from Kenneth Watt who warned about an impending Ice Age, stating:

The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.

I'm sure, in retrospect, that the world wasn't actually chilling for those 20 years; not once the NOAA made its "adjustments" to the temperature data.

• So, what happened to Africa? "Africa’s Lost Kingdoms"--New York Review of Books. This is a review of five books on African history and, in particular, the history between 1400 and 1700. According to the review, Africa was home to several large and developed Empires and Kingdoms of relatively high technical and social sophistication. Where did they go? Well, as lesson, perhaps, to us, their failure may have been a result of the collapse of their monetary system:

What ultimately undid Kongo ... was a vulnerability it shared with some of the other important late holdouts against European encroachment—powerful and sophisticated kingdoms like the Ashanti Empire and Benin—which was a loss of control over its money supply. In Kongo, a locally made cloth of high quality was the main traditional measure of value and means of exchange, alongside a type of seashell, the nzimbu, harvested along the nearby coast. The Dutch, discovering the local fixation on cloth, flooded the region with its early industrial textiles, wiping out the market for Kongo’s own manufacture. After they gained control of Luanda, the Portuguese similarly flooded the region with shells, both local ones and others imported from the Indian Ocean. Similar monetary catastrophes befell the few big surviving West African kingdoms—mostly as a result of the fall in the price of gold following New World discoveries of gold and silver.

• Some interesting history for the electronic and radio geek: "How Allied Planes Got Their D-Day Invasion Stripes and other “Retro-High Tech” Secrets of the Normandy Invasion"--Chicago Boyz. This is a lengthy article on the command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) systems of the Normandy Invasion. 

      The fundamental problem [facing the] Normandy campaign was the Western Allied powers were going to put more aircraft and ships into their respective air and sea space than could be effectively controlled by the available C3I systems. The quartz crystal control VHF (think television channels  1 thru 13) radios and the meter band radars did not provide enough bandwidth for communications nor precise target definition and altitude for tight two way radio directive control of fighter patrols or surface ship screens.  In the age before computer spread sheets and data bases the Western Allied had to control all the emissions for thousands of radios and radars as well as plan on how all these ships and planes were going to shoot move and communicate together without enough electromagnetic spectrum to do so.

     To give you an idea as to the scale of the issue, the primary VHF fighter radio for the Allied air forces in the United Kingdom was the SCR-522 or a British radio that the SCR-522 was copied from.  (The scale of the USAAF and Lend Lease production was such that American build SCR-522 was the predominant fighter radio in the Normandy invasion.)  It was four channel, amplitude modulated (AM), push button, quartz crystal frequency controlled radio that transmitted between 100 Mhz and 156 Mhz.  ...

     There were going to be 171 Allied fighter squadrons in Operation Neptune.   

* * *

     To give each of those 171 squadrons the standard four frequencies operationally required would call for 564 separate radio channels.  Worse, each squadron was between 12 (RAF) and 16 (USAAF) fighters.  So you would be looking at between 2052 and 2736  transmitters on those frequencies.  If you think digital WiFi congestion of 50 lap tops and tablets at your local Starbucks is bad.  That’s nothing compared to the physical impossibility of putting 564 analog radio channels, with ~2300 transmitters, between American broadcast television channel’s 6 and 7.

The author also describes the electronic warfare of the day. Read the whole thing.