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Monday, December 9, 2019

A Quick Run Around the Web (12/9/2019)

"WALT DISNEY WWII CARTOON CAMOUFLAGE ARMY AIR FORCES 2798"--Periscope Films (20 min.). The basics of camouflaging aircraft, vehicles, etc., from aerial observation. Obviously this deals with only the visible spectrum, and not thermal imaging or other types of sensors. 

  • A four-part article from NRA Family on hypothermia:
  • "How to Treat Hypothermia"--addressing the amnesia and confusion, slow warming (especially concentrating on core body temperature).
  • And while we are on the topic of staying warm: "Klymit Insulated V Ultralite SL Sleeping Pad – Field Test & Review"--Ammo Land. The problem with sleeping bags is that when sleeping in it, you crush the material beneath your body reducing its insulative powers. Thus, one of the main reasons for a sleeping pad is to add insulation between your body and ground. The author of this review liked the Klymit Insulated V [i.e. five] Ultralite SL Sleeping Pad.
  • "Camp in comfort using these handy tips"--Scouting Magazine.  Tips cover: (1) protect your head--use a hat or hood; (2) buy your cloths a bit oversized--particularly rain gear or other clothing designed to fit over whatever else you are wearing; (3) don't bother with rain pants; (4) choose wool clothing when you can; (5) try a variety of fabrics for different purposes--don't wear blue jeans, though; (6) have a breathable nylon shell for windy days; (7) sit when possible--bring a camp chair or stool is necessary; (8) use gloves and mittens as appropriate; and (9) don't share first aid supplies or personal hygiene supplies.
  • "The Best Things No One Has Told You About the HPG Umindi"--Jerking the Trigger. This is a review of the Hill People Gear's lumbar pack, the HPG Umindi. The author gives several reasons he likes it with the primary reasons being that it works well while also slinging a rifle, it keeps him cooler than ventilated backpacks, and it carries the weight low and close to the belt.
  • "10mm vs. .40 S&W: Similarities, Differences and Uses"--Shooting Illustrated. After discussing the pros and cons of each cartridge (as well as their history), the author concludes:
Ultimately, I look at the two cartridges like this: if you plan on doing some hunting with your semi-auto, or prefer the feel of a full-sized frame, the 10mm Auto is an excellent choice. Should you prefer a more compact carry gun or find yourself shooting better with a lower level of recoil (and while that may be hard to admit, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being honest with yourself), the .40 S&W will suit you just fine. 
  • "45 Colt Load Data"--Guns & Ammo. Loads for your SAA or replica, as well as more powerful loads for revolvers of modern design and construction. As the author notes, "it also has more case capacity [than .44 Magnum] and in the proper sixguns can outrank the 44 Magnum." But don't use those loads in your replica SAA or similar, even if of modern manufacture.
  • "Everything Handloaders Need To Know About Smokeless Powder"--Shooting Sports USA. Well, I don't know if it covers "everything" but it is more than what most shooters probably know.
  • "How to Purify Water in the Wilderness"--American Hunter. So this article looks at boiling water, discusses various brands of chemicals available for purifying water, ultraviolet light purifiers, and filtration.
  • "Prepper's Livestock Handbook by Leigh Tate"--Thoughts From Frank and Fern. A review of the book and recommendation. They write: "I would highly recommend it for anyone starting out with livestock, or anyone that is looking to expand their animal husbandry experience. It is full of natural ways of raising animals and maintaining their health beyond dependence on chemicals and purchasing all that is needed."
  • "Sheriff’s Tips: The Good Samaritan"--American Rifleman. Be wary when rendering assistance to someone that appears to have a broken down vehicle or need medical attention. An excerpt:
Recently, in a force-on-force scenario, a student, who happened to be an EMT, saw a young woman lying crumpled by the side of a path. He rushed to her side to render aid only to see her roll over and run a rubber knife across his throat. In the debriefing, he told the instructor that he was an EMT and just had to render aid. The instructor told him that he used to be an EMT—now he was just a dead man.
    To illustrate how common and dangerous the problem is, the FBI  released statistics about officers killed by criminal assailants in the line of duty.  In the last 10 years. approximately 49% of officers killed (with a firearm) were shot at a distance of less than five feet from their assailants.  67% of officers killed were closer than 10 feet from their assailant.  
      He continues:
        Trainers took a look at this information and decided that standing still and drawing was getting officers killed at close ranges.  Now, most knowledgeable trainers advocate either a hard lateral movement while drawing or closing the distance and stopping the criminal’s draw, depending on the situation.  There has been a slight change in fatality statistics since the early 1990’s when these new training techniques were implemented.  When the statistics were first reported, the FBI found that 54% of officers were killed at distances of less than five feet.  Looking at the most recent three years’ data from the table above, we find that now the percentage is around 44%.  That’s a significant drop, but it isn’t enough.  Clearly, not all officers receive state of the art training.
          Ellifritz then notes a study that found that an attacker could draw and shoot before an officer could close and stop the draw. But, as Ellifritz explains, there are some major shortcomings in the study, including the distances used, and that fact that the attackers were not drawing from concealment. A more nuanced approach is that at arms-length or closer, it is probably going to be better to close and block the draw, while longer distances may benefit from a hard lateral movement. As always, read the whole thing.
                  ... we all know that some of our best-laid plans may take a southern excursion of their own at times. Such was the case with Moses Bentley and the Bentley Blaster (BB) charge he had created on his own.
                   The BB charge was, in my opinion, more of what we called a “trash shot.” That is, it was just a wad of all of the explosive tailings, odds and ends, left over from making explosive charges. Pieces that wouldn’t really fit into another charge. We would typically take the trash shots downrange and blow them up once a month. ...
                     The next mission called for explosive entry through an exterior door. Think of the front door to your house. It is probably the most no-nonsense, strongest door in your house. All interior doors are likely much lighter and weaker. Moses was the breacher for this target. He was hell-bent on using his BB charge, and use it he did.
                       We two, Moses and I, crept to the front door while the rest of the team stacked up just around the near corner. I had Moses’ back while he worked, just like my mate had my back at the Python. Moses fired the charge but did an odd thing: Rather than back away from the charge, he turned around quickly and ran around the corner.
                         The delay on the firing system was five seconds. I cleared the corner with the team as the charge detonated. MY GOD…it was so loud! I thought. I was stunned and flipped around 180 degrees. My ears rang like the Notre Dame Cathedral, and I wasn’t completely clear what I was even doing or even where I was.
                           As colors slowly returned to my sight I could see now that the front door had not blown up. We had blown up. When Moses turned after firing the charge, his holstered M1911 had hooked the charge, stripping it off the door, dragged it back to the assault team stack, and…BOOOOM!
                             Moses was upside down, with his body slumped against the wall and his head anchored into the ground, neck bent at an impossible angle. You simply could never have manually placed a human in such a bizarre and morbid pose. Well, maybe if you were Jeffrey Dahmer.
                               The man behind Moses lay face down with his uniform trousers completely shredded, his bare legs bleeding from a hundred tiny holes. He was getting up slowly. I ran to him and grabbed his shoulder. He looked up at me with a horrified expression.
                                 “Cos!” I said his name. His face changed completely and he grinned and shook his head a bit, exclaiming, “Whew…I’d hate to see what that door looks like now. WHEW!”
                                    Moses had just come-to from his upside-down unconscious state and immediately got into a pissing match with our team leader, Daddy-Mac. “Well, Mos is OK. That’s what he normally does: argue!” Mos would be fine, but he was certainly NOT fine. He was badly burned, with black and red on his pelvis and legs. Some flesh was blown away and he had holes in both legs. His sidearm was destroyed and likely saved his life.
                                     I could see his junk—which was completely disgusting—where his kit and clothes were blown away, and I was vicariously glad for him that he was still intact. He was out of action for weeks but came in occasionally to argue, because that’s what Mos did: argue.
                                          An in-house investigation performed by The Unit’s master breacher gigged Mos for two faults: The first was the unauthorized use of a non-standard explosive charge, the Bentley Blaster; the second was his failure to follow egress procedure after firing the charge. Remember, he turned 180 degrees and hooked the charge with his pistol. If he had just backed away from the charge once he’d fired it, none of the carnage would have occurred.
                                          The Unit could have let him go for that but didn’t. I’m thankful for that. Mos took his medicine from the master breacher like a man, but only after one hell of a long, drawn-out argument with the guy. Because that’s just what Master Sergeant Moses Bentley did. He argued.

                                      "The Road to Moscow - German Invasion Plans - WW2 - 067 - December 7, 1940"--World War Two (13 min.). Italy continues wasting troops in its fight against Greece while ignoring the British buildup near the Libyan border. Germany's plans for invading Russia are made under the shadow of Napoleon's defeat. British bribery of top Spanish generals, and a German traitor, undermine Germany's attempts to get Spain to assist in taking Gibraltar. 

                                      “Please note that these are not the only pronouns. There are an infinite number of pronouns as new ones emerge in our language. Always ask someone for their pronouns,” said a slide from the training on gender pronouns.
                                      When I first read this, I was immediately reminded of this statement from Theodore Dalrymple:
                                      In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is...in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
                                      • More on the NAS Pensacola shooting and investigation:
                                            The lines between terrorism and criminality are becoming blurred as an increasing number of former criminals join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and create a “gangster jihad,” according to a British report released Tuesday.

                                            Nearly 60 percent of European jihadists studied by researchers had been jailed previously, in essence creating a “super-gang,” said the report from the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence at King’s College London.

                                           Once recruited by ISIS, these people easily transition to committing violence for a different cause, making the group different from other Islamist organizations such as al Qaeda, which often radicalized students, intellectuals or other previously non-violent individuals to carry out its violent aims, the report said. 
                                      It was also the year of the great riot. Angered by the exoneration of four white policemen who had killed a black insurance man, the residents of Liberty City, a predominantly black section of Miami, launched what was arguably the worst race riot of this century. It wasn’t just a civil protest. Blacks went out specifically to get whites, to assault them, to kill them. Some whites were doused with gasoline and set on fire. Some were beaten senseless in the street and run over, repeatedly. Nobody in Liberty City apologized. And when President Carter visited the area a few weeks later, to promise money for rebuilding the sacked neighborhoods (money that apparently never got there), blacks booed him and threw rocks and bottles at his motorcade.
                                      • They really do hate you: "The Anti-White Party" by William S. Lind at Traditional Right. Lind notes:
                                            An outtake in an article in the November 14 New York Times about the Iowa caucuses caused me to do a double take: “Democrats question the status of a state that’s 90% white.”
                                              Imagine that the Times had instead said, “Republicans question the status of a state that’s heavily black,” or “GOP questions the status of a state that’s largely Hispanic.”  The crises of outrage would reach to the heavens. Every Establishment organ would demand the Republicans pee all over themselves, grovel in the dust, and kiss the feet of so-called black and Hispanic “leaders”, most of whom are con artists.  But when the Democrats dismiss a state because it’s largely white? Not a murmur of protest arose from any quarter.
                                        He continues:
                                                The Democratic Party’s hostility toward whites is a product of the broader ideology that party has embraced, the ideology of cultural Marxism, which is commonly known as “political correctness” or “multiculturalism”.  Like Moscow’s old Marxism-Leninism, cultural Marxism says certain kinds of people are a priori good and others evil, regardless of what individuals do.  In Marxism-Leninism, workers and peasants are good while landlords, capitalists and members of the middle class, the bourgeoisie, are evil.  The latter are fit only to be “liquidated”, which Soviet Communism did on a scale that put Hitler to shame: not six million dead, but sixty million.  ...
                                                  Cultural Marxism says whites are inherently evil “oppressors” who must constantly beg blacks, Indians, immigrants, etc. to forgive their “white privilege”.  ...
                                                   It is now virtually impossible to be a Democrat and not embrace cultural Marxism.  That ideology condemns not only whites, but males, non-feminist women, straights, and Christians.  All are fit only to be–what? Liquidated, like Russia’s middle and upper classes? From what we see on university campuses where cultural Marxists hold power, it seems there are no limits on how far their hatred of whites will go.
                                                     What this all adds up to is that, for the 2020 elections, there is really only one issue.  The Democratic Party is anti-white, anti-male, anti-straight, and anti-Christian. Logically, that means no white, male, straight, or Christian should vote Democrat.  To do so would be to vote for their own persecution and eventual extinction in a country they created. If we really want to commit suicide, there are better ways to do it than by handing political power over to our enemies.
                                                Read the whole thing.
                                                       In comes Yuri Slezkine, a Russian born (1956- ) Jew who currently lives in the United States. The Jews, he explains in the first chapter of the book, are not unique at all. Instead they are one among a great many nations whom he groups together under the rubric, “Mercurian.” Including, to mention but a few, the Gypsies of Europe, the Persians and the Jain of India, the Copts of Egypt, the Fuga of southern Ethiopia, the Ibo of modern Nigeria, the Eta of traditional Japan, the Armenians and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, the Nestorians in the Middle East, the Mormons in the U.S—an example Slezkine does not mention–and, above all, the overseas Chinese.
                                                        “Mercurian” peoples were and are distinguished from the rest—Apollonians, is what Slezkine calls them—in two principal ways. First, they regard themselves as a people chosen by God. Not just any God, but specifically their own tribal one. To retain that status they develop and maintain a different religion, a different language, a different culture, different mores—as, for example, in wearing turbans (the Sikh community of India) and eating only kosher food—as well as an often strictly enforced endogamy. Second, whether out of their own will or because of the restrictions under which they live, they tend to avoid production—first agriculture, later industry—in favor of other, specifically urban, professions. Including money changers, bankers, peddlers, traders, physicians, pharmacists (both in my family and that of my wife there were several of those), scribes, writers, musicians, actors, fortune tellers, matchmakers, agents, lawyers, and middlemen of every kind. The sort of people who, compared with their mostly rural neighbors, tended to be well ahead in terms of literacy and modernity in general.
                                                         Thus, contrary to what I and countless Israelis have been taught, we Jews are not unique. ...
                                                      Here are a few of his most significant findings:
                                                      1. Effect of sexual constraints: Increased sexual constraints, either pre or post-nuptial, always led to increased flourishing of a culture. Conversely, increased sexual freedom always led to the collapse of a culture three generations later. 
                                                      2. Single most influential factor: Surprisingly, the data revealed that the single most important correlation with the flourishing of a culture was whether pre-nuptial chastity was required or not. It had a very significant effect either way.
                                                      3. Highest flourishing of culture: The most powerful combination was pre-nuptial chastity coupled with “absolute monogamy”. Rationalist cultures that retained this combination for at least three generations exceeded all other cultures in every area, including literature, art, science, furniture, architecture, engineering, and agriculture. Only three out of the eighty-six cultures studied ever attained this level.
                                                      4. Effect of abandoning prenuptial chastity: When strict prenuptial chastity was no longer the norm, absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking also disappeared within three generations.
                                                      5. Total sexual freedom: If total sexual freedom was embraced by a culture, that culture collapsed within three generations to the lowest state of flourishing — which Unwin describes as “inert” and at a “dead level of conception” and is characterized by people who have little interest in much else other than their own wants and needs. At this level, the culture is usually conquered or taken over by another culture with greater social energy.
                                                      6. Time lag: If there is a change in sexual constraints, either increased or decreased restraints, the full effect of that change is not realized until the third generation. ...
                                                      Peck also relates:
                                                      A loosening of sexual constraints probably does not occur in one year or even one decade. In our case, one could argue that the sexual revolution began in the late 1960’s, lasted throughout the 70’s and possibly into the early 1980’s. According to Unwin, only small changes in a culture occur in the first generation, due to the cultural ‘momentum’ of the previous generation, which still continues to be a heavy influence in the generation after the loosening (or strengthening) of sexual restraints. The changes become more prevalent in the second generation, but it is not until the third generation, after the initial generation has completely died off, that the changes reach their full effect, occurring rapidly over the course of that third generation. By the end of the third generation, the changes have fully taken place and the culture stabilizes at its new level. However, if it has stabilized at the highest level, then the flourishing of that culture continues to increase in subsequent generations (though Unwin observes that no culture maintains that state very long). If it has stabilized at the lowest level (i.e., a “collapse”), then that culture is destroyed from within, or conquered or taken over by a more “energetic” culture.
                                                      According to Peck, "Unwin’s three main predictions — the abandonment of rationalism, deism, and absolute monogamy — are all well underway, which makes the ultimate prediction appear to be credible … the collapse of Western civilization in the third generation, somewhere in the last third of this century."
                                                      By at

                                                      2 comments:

                                                      1. John WilderDecember 9, 2019 at 8:12 PM

                                                        The Peck/Unwin piece is good. Is it the cause or the consequence?

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                                                        1. DocentDecember 9, 2019 at 9:56 PM

                                                          It appears to me to be r/K theory, just focusing on social mores. If correct, I would say that the wealthy, mature society creates an environment where the r-select (low sexual morality) can thrive.

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                                                      Weekend Reading--A Knowledge Dump and More

                                                       Greg Elifritz has posted a new Weekend Knowledge Dump   with links to articles and a podcast on a variety of self-defense and prepping topi...