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Wednesday, January 5, 2022

The Docent's Memo (Jan. 5, 2022)

 

VIDEO: "Freezing Rifle Test. (AK, AR-15, SCAR, FAL etc)"--Garand Thumb (37 min.)
He performed two tests: the first was with pouring water on the weapon and letting it freeze, to simulate how a freezing rain might impact a weapon; the second was liberally pouring water on the weapons to simulate immersion in water before freezing. Unsurprisingly, the winners in this test were all AK variants. ARs and anything with AR style safeties faired poorly. The takeaway, to me, isn't that you should forgo your SCAR, AR style rifles, M1A1, Steyr AUG, etc., when living in a cold weather area, but that if your weapon gets wet and you are in freezing conditions, you need to dry the weapon before the moisture freezes. Or try peeing on it to defrost it as the troops in the Korean War had to do with their weapons.

Firearms/Shooting/Self-Defense:

  • Shot across the bow: "ATF Just FedEx’d Warning Letters to Thousands of Silencer Part Consumers"--The Truth About Guns. The letter is to customers of Diversified Machine and warns them that Diversified Machine sold silencer and silencer components, they (the recipient of the letter) purchased products from Diversified Machine, and that having an unregistered silencer is a felony under Federal Law. 
  • Life under an authoritarian government: "Britain’s Crossbow Rules in the Cross Hairs After Windsor Castle Breach"--MSN. The gist of the story is that a couple days ago, a man was apprehended on the grounds of Windsor Castle and, when searched, had a crossbow on him. Crossbows, up to now, have been largely unregulated for persons over 18, but this article indicates that the government is using this incident as an excuse to try and implement legal restricts on purchasing or owning a crossbow. Per the article, it is already an offense to possess arrows, or possess offensive weapons in public spaces “without good reason or lawful authority.”
  • Negative outcomes: It is unfortunate when we hear of someone being shot due to negligence. Most of the time, these incidents could be avoided by following the four rules of gun safety:
  1. Treat all guns as if they are always loaded.
  2. Never let the muzzle point at anything that you are not willing to destroy.
  3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot.
  4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

I came across a few stories of negative outcomes:

  • "Dialing In Sights on a Snubnose Revolver" by Chris Christian, Shooting Illustrated (h/t Active Response Training). When adjusting fixed sights on a revolver, which are typically all you have with a snub-nosed revolver, you pretty much are relegated to filing.
    With fixed-sight snubnose revolvers, elevation adjustments are made by changing the height of the front sight. Windage adjustments are made by removing metal from the appropriate side of the inner rear sight channel, unless your gun uses a rear dovetail sight that can be drifted right or left. Most snubnose revolvers use a milled channel rear sight.

    It is best to address one issue at a time, and windage is the best place to start.

    To adjust windage (horizontal dispersion) you remove metal from the inside of the rear channel sight in the direction you want the POI to move. If the gun is shooting left, remove metal from the right side to move the POI to the right. If it's shooting to the right, remove metal from the left.

    The tool required is a flat Swiss file. Ten yards is a realistic distance to zero a snubnose revolver, and it will put bullets on target to well beyond 25 yards.

    Set a target at 10 yards, preferably with a comfortable chair and a bench with a sandbag rest. Fire a two- or three-round group. Note the POI group center as opposed to the POA. Use the Swiss file to make four or five swipes on the inside of the rear sight channel in the direction you want the bullet to move. Fire another group to check the progress. Don't be in a hurry! Approach this slowly. It doesn't take much metal removal from the short sight radius to move the POI several inches. If you overshoot and move the POI too far, simply make a few swipes in the other side to bring it back. If the gun has a satin finish, you're done. If it is blued steel, you need to touch up the sight channel with cold blue.

    Of course, this will widen the rear notch, but that's a definite advantage, because it allows more light around the front sight, making for easier acquisition and alignment.

  • "Top Five Shooting Stances" by Chris Christian, Shooting Illustrated. This article explains the top 5 shooting stances for combat pistol shooting: (i) the Weaver stance; (ii) the Chapman stance (sometimes referred to as a modified Weaver stance); (iii) the isosceles stance; (iv) the power point stance (a 1-handed shooting stance); and (v) the strong-hand retention stance. The author explains each stance and how to get into the stance, as well as the pros and cons of each. My father taught me to shoot using a Chapman stance when I was a child and so that is what I primarily use unless shooting one-handed where I transition to the standard bladed stance (similar to a fencer's stance).
  • "Long Range Precision Shooting: Can the AR-15 and AR-10 be Included in the Discussion?"--The New Rifleman. The author discusses whether an AR style rifle can be as good as a bolt action at long range precision shooting. His summary:
      • It’s going to be incredibly expensive
      • Your AR is likely, going to be front-heavy
      • Forget that it’s just going to be front-heavy, it’s going to be heavier all-over than a bolt-action generally, because you must add a lot of components and a lot of barrel weight; you may even need to balance the rear end of the firearm as well
      • It’s going to be hard to source the right parts during some parts of the year
      • You’re going to need to know how to build an AR well
      • Over time, the AR platform is not going to hold up as well (from a tolerance perspective) as a more robust firearm will
      • Tolerances are not what an AR is built for, and while you can modify one to achieve excellent tolerances, they are never going to be on the level of a bolt-action firearm – at least not from a precision hardware perspective
      • Optimizing loads and barrels become more important – unfortunately for the AR platform, many of the best optimization combinations aren’t available

    Having said all that, it is not impossible to build an AR-15 to an exacting standard and have it be in the same realm of competition as a bolt-action firearm for many long-range precision shooting needs. 

    Simply put it will be an undertaking, however.

    Magnification powers have steadily increased over the years to the point some guys can’t imagine making a 50-yard shot on a deer with anything less than 10X. There comes a point where exit pupil produces diminishing returns. The human iris only opens to a maximum of about 8 mm without chemical intervention. More typical is an opening of 6 to 7 mm. Thus a scope with an objective-lens diameter of 60 mm and a maximum magnification of 10X is still only going to have an exit pupil of 6 mm at 10X. Lower powers will have a larger exit pupil, but the human eye is incapable of accommodating the increase in light transmission.

    Newer shooters who get lulled into a high-magnification scope soon realize that all that magnification is useless—even detrimental—to accurate shooting unless accompanied by a suitable rest or other auxiliary shooting support. You may think you are holding your rifle rock steady, but if your scope is 10X or greater in magnification you will see a lot more shaking, wiggling and wobbling than you ever dreamed of. Even I with my diminishing eyesight can see my heartbeat in a 4X scope.

    Many shooters would not think of going afield without a bipod attached to their rifle. Shooting sticks are also increasing in popularity—they have been de rigueur in Africa for decades—and today many precision shooters will pack a heavy tripod designed for photography and a special adapter to attach their rifle to it.

  • "Main Battle Rifle" (Part 1) (Part 2) -- Hybrid Tactics Security (h/t KA9OFF). The author is not using the term "battle rifle" as it normally is used (i.e., applying to .308 combat rifles), but as a rifle whose "purpose is its employment, in battle, by me in the defense of myself, my family or others against others who would do us harm" notwithstanding his two such rifles are 5.56.
The “Main” that I added to the term “Battle Rifle” is because I have many rifles, but not each one is set up to carry me into battle with the accessories that I prefer attached.  Those are typically rifles that I provide for use at the range by parties interested in purchasing a rifle but are not very knowledgeable about them.


VIDEO: "What Will Happen When Earth's North And South Pole Flip?"--Tech Insider (5 min.)
If you have been following this blog for any time, you know that the magnetic poles are not only moving more rapidly over the last couple decades, but have also been weakening quickly. This video explains that this could be a sign that the magnetic poles may flip and discusses some of the effects that could occur during such an event.

Prepping/Survival:

  • "Mobs, Mob Looting, and Other Crimes" by Bill White, Survivopedia. The article discusses why we have seen extensive mob violence over the past two years and why it won't be going away soon, as well as offering some tips on dealing with mob violence. An excerpt:
    The best thing to do with any mob situation is to be someplace else. I don’t care what the mob is there for. They’re eventually going to be up to no good, vandalizing property, committing acts of violence, and looting. If you’re not part of what they’re doing, then you’re likely to become a target of their violence.

    If the mob is operating near your home, prepare yourself to defend your home. But don’t do it as the McCloskeys did in St. Louis. They made two big mistakes. One was to be outside with their guns, where any action of theirs could be seen as a provocation by the mob, and the other was when Mrs. McCloskey pointed her gun in the direction of the crowd. Had anyone in the group taken a shot at her, they could have claimed it was self-defense.

    Remember, you can’t defeat a mob on your own. There is no gun that you can buy short of an actual machine gun, which will allow you to stop them all. And if you try using a machine gun against a mob, I’m pretty sure you’re going to go to jail for life. Is it worth it?

Well, you just need to emulate a machine gun which could be done with some of the shotguns that use high capacity magazines or with a line of riflemen. 

    Less than 20% of the world's population has managed to stockpile more than half of the globe's maize and other grains, leading to steep price increases across the planet and dropping more countries into famine.

    The hoarding is taking place in China.

    COFCO Group, a major Chinese state-owned food processor, runs one of China's largest food stockpiling bases, at the port of Dalian, in the northeastern part of the country. It stores beans and grains gathered from home and abroad in 310 huge silos. From there, the calories make their way throughout China via rail and sea.

    China is maintaining its food stockpiles at a "historically high level," Qin Yuyun, head of grain reserves at the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, told reporters in November. "Our wheat stockpiles can meet demand for one and a half years. There is no problem whatsoever about the supply of food."

    According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, China is expected to have 69% of the globe's maize reserves in the first half of crop year 2022, 60% of its rice and 51% of its wheat.

If China is afraid of shortages and stockpiling grain, it may well behoove the prepper to also stock up where possible.

Yes, you should definitely stockpile peanut butter for prepping purposes. It is an instant food, rich in nutrients, and high in calories, and there are claims it will last for 10 years in powdered form. It is easily available, cheap, and also versatile, as it can be used in both sweet and savory dishes, and tastes good alone.

Even the normal stuff you buy at the store should last up to 3 years according to the author. Besides, imagine how nice a batch of no-bake cookies would be in a grid down situation.

    On the other hand, we have personal radiation detectors, or PRDs. It is helpful to think of a personal radiation detector as a sort of upgraded Geiger counter, and they generally work on the same principles.

    PRDs come in many varieties with various sets of capability, but the most basic kind is worn on the body and functions by detecting and localizing the source of radiation in the immediate area around the wearer.

    If you are dealing with a dangerous source of radiation like a dirty bomb or nuclear fuel leak, you’ll definitely want one of these.

    A quality PRD provides all of the immediately useful indication capability of a Geiger counter while gathering more data and presenting it to the user in a useful way.

    With this heightened capability comes greater complexity, however, and PRDs must be carefully manufactured, calibrated and tested to ensure correct and complete functionality.

    But in exchange they are capable of detecting and assessing pretty much every type of radiation that might be threatening to a human.

    Alpha, beta, gamma radiation and x-rays are all detectable by the right PRD. Even better, many units can be upgraded or feature semi-modular expansion capability for different tasks.

VIDEO: "Turkey's Economy Has Already Collapsed! You Just Don't Know It Yet..."--Stoic Finance (21 min.)
News & Current Events:
  • As you probably know, the James Webb telescope was successfully launched into space on December 25, 2021. As of the date of the cited article, the telescope had begun unfolding its sun shield. The article explains that "[t]he telescope will have a hot and cold side, with the hot side, behind the sunshield, experiencing temperatures up to 185 degrees Fahrenheit - holding a solar panel, communication antenna and a computer," while "[t]he cold side of the telescope will be at -388 degrees Fahrenheit, holding the mirrors and science instruments." The telescope had already reached the altitude of the Moon at the time the article was written, but the telescope is heading out much farther--approximately 1 million miles--to nestle into the L2 Lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun. Insertion into L2 is expected to occur 29 days after launch. However, it will be 6 months before the telescope starts sending images back to Earth due to the time to run tests and calibrate the instrument. The James Webb will be about 100 times as powerful as the Hubble telescope and because it is set up to view infrared and near infrared, should give a better view through the dark matter dust and plasma that obscures much of the visible spectrum.

          China's property development giant Evergrande has suspended shares from trading pending the release of 'inside information', the company has said. 

          Evergrande, the world's most-indebted developer with $300billion in liabilities, has been teetering on the brink of insolvency since Beijing changed borrowing rules to tame speculation on the property market.

          If the firm collapses, there are fears it could send shockwaves through the global economy. Evergrande has already missed payments on $20billion in international bonds that were due last month, which are now deemed to be in cross-default.
          Authorities in the northern Chinese city of Xi'an have placed the city of 13 million under lockdown, amid a sharp rise in the number of COVID-19 cases and fears over a recent outbreak of epidemic hemorrhagic fever, local residents told RFA.

          A resident of Xi'an's Xixian New District surnamed Wang said her community had been placed under lockdown on Wednesday evening.

          "I am guessing that the latest wave of cases in Xi'an must be higher than the original wave in Wuhan," Wang told RFA, saying there are rumors that the city is going to be "the next Wuhan."

          "No hemorrhagic fever was found in Wuhan [in early 2020], but Xi'an is now faced with a double epidemic," she said. "Everyone in China is paying attention to Xi'an right now," she said.

          The move comes after dozens of COVID-19 cases were reported by authorities in Xi'an over several consecutive days, with mass PCR testing already under way across the city.

          However, the city has also seen a growing number of hemorrhagic fever cases in recent weeks, according to media controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

          The Global Times, which has close ties to CCP mouthpiece the People's Daily, quoted a medical staff member at the infection unit of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University as saying that the hospital had admitted a patient with non-life-threatening hemorrhagic fever in the past few days.

          "Hemorrhagic fever is a common infectious disease in northern China," the paper said. "Starting from October every year, some areas of Shaanxi [of which Xi'an is the provincial capital] enter the high incidence season of hemorrhagic fever."

          The disease, also known as epidemic hemorrhagic fever, is caused by hantavirus, with rodents as the main source of infection, it said.

      A novel tick-borne hemorrhagic fever first appeared in China in 2009-2010. China reported 209,209 cases of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) between 2004 and 2019.

          In the latest shocking measure, 30 busses turned up in the Mingde 8 Yingli neighborhood at just after midnight on January 1 and ordered all residents they must leave and go into quarantine.
       
          Pictures uploaded to Chinese social media site Weibo showed health officials in full PPE standing beside a convoy of busses flanked by police cars.

          One user claimed that up to 1,000 people were carted off, while another said that 30 busses were spotted around their block.

          Further images posted online purported to show the austere living quarters inside the quarantine facilities, with cheap bunk beds and tiny desks.

          Others claimed that the rooms were cold and that the officials had not made proper arrangements for accommodated children and elderly people.

          'There is nothing here, just basic necessities... Nobody has come to check up on us, what kind of quarantine is this? They did a big transfer of us, more than a thousand people, in the night and many of us are elderly people and children. They didn't make any proper arrangements and so they just carelessly placed us [here],' read one comment posted by an affected resident.

      Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

          We are Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi, editors of The BMJ, one of the world’s oldest and most influential general medical journals. We are writing to raise serious concerns about the “fact checking” being undertaken by third party providers on behalf of Facebook/Meta.

          In September, a former employee of Ventavia, a contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial, began providing The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. These materials revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety. We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites.

          The BMJ commissioned an investigative reporter to write up the story for our journal. The article was published on 2 November, following legal review, external peer review and subject to The BMJ’s usual high level editorial oversight and review.[1]

          But from November 10, readers began reporting a variety of problems when trying to share our article. Some reported being unable to share it. Many others reported having their posts flagged with a warning about “Missing context ... Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Those trying to post the article were informed by Facebook that people who repeatedly share “false information” might have their posts moved lower in Facebook’s News Feed. Group administrators where the article was shared received messages from Facebook informing them that such posts were “partly false.”

          Readers were directed to a “fact check” performed by a Facebook contractor named Lead Stories.[2]

          We find the “fact check” performed by Lead Stories to be inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.

          -- It fails to provide any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong

          -- It has a nonsensical title: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials”

          -- The first paragraph inaccurately labels The BMJ a “news blog”

          -- It contains a screenshot of our article with a stamp over it stating “Flaws Reviewed,” despite the Lead Stories article not identifying anything false or untrue in The BMJ article

          -- It published the story on its website under a URL that contains the phrase “hoax-alert”

          We have contacted Lead Stories, but they refuse to change anything about their article or actions that have led to Facebook flagging our article.

          We have also contacted Facebook directly, requesting immediate removal of the “fact checking” label and any link to the Lead Stories article, thereby allowing our readers to freely share the article on your platform.

          There is also a wider concern that we wish to raise. We are aware that The BMJ is not the only high quality information provider to have been affected by the incompetence of Meta’s fact checking regime. To give one other example, we would highlight the treatment by Instagram (also owned by Meta) of Cochrane, the international provider of high quality systematic reviews of the medical evidence.[3] Rather than investing a proportion of Meta’s substantial profits to help ensure the accuracy of medical information shared through social media, you have apparently delegated responsibility to people incompetent in carrying out this crucial task. Fact checking has been a staple of good journalism for decades. What has happened in this instance should be of concern to anyone who values and relies on sources such as The BMJ.

          We hope you will act swiftly: specifically to correct the error relating to The BMJ’s article and to review the processes that led to the error; and generally to reconsider your investment in and approach to fact checking overall.

      Best wishes,

      Fiona Godlee, editor in chief

      Kamran Abbasi, incoming editor in chief

      The BMJ

          If the autopsy findings are confirmed by other pathologists with additional samples, and if they are combined with the findings of Dr. Hoffe (>60% inoculant recipients have elevated D-dimer tests and evidence of clotting) and Dr. Cole (increase in cancers after inoculation, including twenty-fold increase in uterine cancer), we are seeing a disaster of unimaginable proportions.  The conclusion (if supported by further data) is that essentially EVERY inoculant recipient suffers damage, with more damage after each shot.  Given the seriousness of the types of damage (autoimmune diseases, cancer, re-emergent dormant infections, clotting/strokes, cardiac damage, etc.), these effects will translate into lifespan reduction, which should be counted as deaths from the inoculations.  So, in the USA, where ~200M people have been fully inoculated, the number of deaths will not be the 10,000 or so reported in VAERS, or the 150,000+ scaled-up deaths from VAERS, but could be closer to tens of millions when the inoculation effects play out!

          What the above three findings (Burkhart, Hoffe, Cole, and I suspect many others who have not yet come forward) show is that the post-inoculation effects are not rare events (as reported by the media-gov't), but are in actuality frequent events.  They may be, in fact, universal, with the severity and damage different for each recipient. 

          The question in my mind is whether it is possible to reverse these inoculation-based adverse events.  Can the innate immune system be fully restored?  Can the micro clotting be reversed?  Can the autoimmunity be reversed?  I have seen a wide spectrum of opinions on whether this is possible, none of which is overly convincing. 

          Are we headed for the situation where the ~30% unvaxxed will be devoting their lives to operating whatever is left of the economic infrastructure and serving as caretakers for the vaxxed?

          I realize the above sounds extreme, and maybe when more data are gathered from myriad credible sources the results and conclusions may change, but right now the above data seem to synchronize with the demonstrated underlying mechanisms of damage.  Additionally, we seem to be doubling down on inoculations, with fourth booster being proposed for Israel, and UK suggesting quarterly boosters.

          The CDC's latest count of deaths attributed to COVID-19 vaccines is nearly 20,000, but a study by researchers at Columbia University estimates the actual number is 20 times higher.

          The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, or VAERS, reports 19,886 deaths, 102,857 hospitalizations and a total of 946,461 adverse events due to COVID-19 vaccines through Dec. 3.

          If the Columbia study's underreporting factor is correct, it would mean that there are nearly 400,000 deaths due to COVID-19 vaccines.

          Data continues to come in showing that the vaccines are not only powerless against the highly transmissible, but mild Omicron variant—the new strain appears to favor the fully vaccinated.

          In Canada, 76.87 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, and 81.1 percent of recent cases are amongst the fully vaccinated, Dr. Ezra Kahan reported on Twitter.

          Data continues to come in showing that the vaccines are not only powerless against the highly transmissible, but mild Omicron variant—the new strain appears to favor the fully vaccinated.

          In Canada, 76.87 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, and 81.1 percent of recent cases are amongst the fully vaccinated, Dr. Ezra Kahan reported on Twitter.

          The same pattern is being seen all over: Florida, Iceland, UK, Germany, Denmark … 

      • "Déjà vu: French scientists detect ANOTHER variant linked to travel to Cameroon and say it carries 46 mutations that may make it more vaccine-resistant and infectious (but it is so far NOT outcompeting Omicron)"--Daily Mail. The variant IHU (aka, B.1.640.2) carries the E484K mutation that is thought to make it more resistant to vaccines and the N501Y mutation — first seen on the Alpha variant — that experts believe can make it more transmissible.  It appears to have originated in the African country of Cameroon. 
      • The sound of silence: "Guardian ‘Person of the Year’ Poll Deactivated After J.K. Rowling Takes Lead"--Breitbart. J.K. Rowling has been cancelled in England and abandoned by the cast of the Harry Potter movies because Rowling had the temerity to call a spade a spade ... or rather, assert that transvestite men was still men no matter the pronoun they use. Of course, given Rowlings decision to make Dumbledore gay, everyone just assumed that she would be onboard with regard to transvestites rather than commit a grave heresy to the woke religion.
      • Progressives being progressive: "Jan. 6 panel to recommend new intelligence-gathering legislation, chairman says"--The Hill. Can't let those Constitution loving conservatives mess up the Left's plans to consolidate their control over the Federal government. The 4th Amendment? Really more of a suggestion than a rule according to the Progressives and their ilk.
      • NYC will become a more interesting place to live and visit: "Manhattan DA to stop seeking prison sentences in slew of criminal cases"--New York Post. Although New York City voters elected a tough on crime mayor, it won't really matter to those living and working in Manhattan because they elected a soft on crime district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Bragg informed his office that they will not be seeking prison sentences for crimes other than "except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption." Keep in mind that used to be prosecuted as attempted murder is now generally charged as aggravated assault or aggravated battery, and I don't see those in his list. In any event, even where the crime meets his list, his office will not be seeking sentences of more than 20 years determinant--e.g., no life sentences or death penalty for murder. His office will not be pursuing low level crimes and will also minimize the number of people jailed prior to trial. Also, per the article, "Assistant district attorneys must also now keep in mind the 'impacts of incarceration' including on public safety, barriers to housing and employment, financial cost and race disparities, Bragg instructed."
      • "As Biden's Border Crisis Rages, Armed Texans Arrive to Round Up Illegal Aliens" by Jack Gist, The Western Journal. Texas law now allows illegal aliens to be arrested for trespassing, which then makes it easier for private citizens to arrest or detain the illegals. This has proven unpopular with the usual suspects: the ACLU and the U.S. Department of Justice.
      • "Report: China Replacing Soldiers with Robots in Tibet Due to Poor Performance"--Breitbart. The article indicates that the decision was made because "ethnic Han soldiers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) [where having] trouble coping with the cold temperatures and thin air of Tibet."
        • More: "China Is a Paper Dragon" by David Frum, The Atlantic. This May 2021 article discusses the many reasons that China is unlikely to displace the United States as the world's preeminent military and economic power. From the article:
      Above all, Beckley pleads with readers not to focus on the headline numbers of gross domestic product. China may well surpass the United States as the largest economy on Earth by the 2030s. China was also almost certainly the largest economy on Earth in the 1830s. A big GDP did not make China a superpower then—and it will not make China a superpower now, or so Beckley contends.

      This is because China has more than 3 times the population of the United States. It may achieve a higher GDP, but a lower GDP per capita. The article also points out that China's military is largely a paper tiger with troops receiving less training of lower quality, and spending too much time studying Chinese propaganda. College test scores are also skewed because, in China, the government only provides schooling through middle school. Thus, "76 percent of China’s working-age population has not completed high school." The ones going onto college represent a much smaller percentage--and are already the cream of the crop--compared to U.S. students going on to college. But, like the military, the college programs are not as challenging as in the U.S.

      Many Chinese college students describe their universities as “diploma factories,” where student-teacher ratios are double the average in U.S. universities, cheating is rampant, students spend a quarter of their time studying “Mao Zedong thought,” and students and professors are denied access to basic sources of information, such as Google Scholar and certain academic journal repositories.

      The article also mentions that China is well behind the United States when it comes to research and development. And comparisons between military spending is also misleading because the Chinese government spends a considerable sum on internal control to crush dissent.

      China’s language and behavior is assertive and provocative, for sure. China’s power is rising, yes. Its behavior at home and abroad is becoming more oppressive and more brutal; that’s also tragically true. But as Americans muster the courage and will to face Chinese realities, that reckoning needs also to appreciate the tremendous capabilities of this country, and the very real limits besetting China: a fast-aging population, massive internal indebtedness, and a regime whose worsening repression suggests its declining popularity.

          In a shocking memo sent out by the state's Health Department and approved by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday, white residents were told not to bother trying to get Pfizer's Paxlovid pill or monoclonal antibody treatments.

          'Non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity should be considered a risk factor as longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19,'  the document reads. 
       
      Of course, if the races were reversed, there would be riots, the DoJ would be sending teams of investigators and criminal charges would be filed, Hollywood would be calling for boycotts of New York, and it would be the top story on all the major networks and newspapers.  
      • Speaking of racism against White people: "'I Despise White People' Lawsuit Against OSU Can Go Forward"--Volokh Conspiracy. The plaintiff in this case is Mary Faure, who had worked for OSU for 30 years, and ultimately became Director of Engineering Technical Communications for the Engineering Education Department at the OSU College of Engineering. The administrator that discriminated against Faure and eventually fired her is Dr. Monica Cox, the Chair of the EED. Among other things, Faure alleged that Dr. Cox said, "I despise white people" multiple times and discussed "barriers and disadvantages that white people had put up against her in her previous life." Dr. Cox also made racist statements about white people such as: there were "so many old white men in the EED;" "white men in the EED held too much power;" "white people are too sensitive;" referring to white individuals in the EED as "big lips" and "Colonel Sanders;" calling a white male professor "a bully" and said, "he talks too much in meetings." An administrative assistant who worked for Dr. Cox for 16 months stated that Dr. Cox made race-based comments at least once a month and would warn her, "if you say I said this, I'll deny it." Sounds like a hostile work environment to me.
      • Only law enforcement can be trusted with guns: "AG: Idaho sheriff charged after pulling gun on youth group leaving thank you notes"--KTVB. From the lede:
      The sheriff of Bingham County is facing felony charges after investigators say he pulled a gun on a group of girls, dragged their youth group leader out of her car by her hair, and threatened to shoot her while holding a gun to her head.

      Also:

          The woman supervising the youth group told investigators that the girls returned to her car after leaving the turkey, and she was driving away past the sheriff's home when she saw Rowland standing in the road waving her down. 

          The youth group leader stopped and opened her car door, illuminating the inside of the car where the seven girls were sitting, and told Rowland that they had just been dropping something off for his wife.

          She said Rowland looked into the car, pointed his gun at her, then pointed it at two girls sitting in the front passenger seat. The sheriff then aimed the gun back at her, the woman said, and told her to "get the f-- out of the car," the woman reported. 

          As she moved to put the vehicle in park, the woman said, Rowland grabbed her by the hair, yanked her from the car, and aimed his gun at her face, holding it just inches from her forehead. 

          Multiple girls inside the car reported hearing the sheriff ask the woman who she was and say "I will f----shoot you," according to investigators.

          The youth group leader, who grew up in the house next to Rowland and considered him a family friend, said she told Rowland her name and that she was his neighbor, but added that the words did not seem to register.  


      VIDEO: "Feeble Marine Boot Camp after Gender Integration"--Jamesons Travels (9 min.)
      The author of this video provides some commentary to a short piece extolling the virtues of an integrated boot camp for male and female recruits. The author acknowledges we can do it, but asks whether we should do it.


      VIDEO: "No Mercy! Greatest Female Fighter EVER Gets Into Ring With Average Male Fighter & Has INSTANT Regret"--Black Conservative Perspective (14 min.). The top rated professional female kickboxer is tired of beating other women and decides to get into the ring with an amateur male kickboxer and promptly gets the crap beat out of her. I think this answers the question of whether we should integrate women into combat roles with men.

      Opinions & Analysis: 

          The tea leaves aren’t difficult to read: China and Hollywood can bid adieu to any attempts at in-depth cultural collaboration for the foreseeable future as relations between Tinseltown and the world’s largest film market enter a new, unprecedented chapter.

          In wide-ranging interviews conducted by Variety, a dozen producers, studio executives and industry org representatives have said that 2022 will be a chapter marked not only by bilateral friction between the two superpowers, but by the Chinese film industry’s decoupling from the broader global film industry as a whole, as the country turns inward under President Xi Jinping.

          Under the veil of COVID-19 isolationism, the past two years have seen Beijing unwinding the Deng Xiaoping era of reform and opening and shifting back towards a top-down management system for content creation in ways that will affect Chinese creatives in the years to come.

          In this new frontier, China’s U.S.-listed behemoths are ditching Wall Street, delisting and coming home; longtime U.S. producers working between East and West are pivoting away from China towards other Asian markets; and ambitious Chinese firms that once dreamt of building bridges across the Pacific have turned towards the more tangible rewards of making local content in step with the Communist Party’s vision of the times.

      And: 

          When China barged into Hollywood between 2014 and 2017 or so, they were making deals that allowed them to grow the expertise necessary to build their own industry. “Without question, every investment that they made was tied to getting this sort of information. Every single one,” says Moore, a veteran of cross-Pacific deals who has represented clients such as Alibaba Pictures, Hunan Group and Perfect World. “They learned, and then they rolled up the ladder and went home.”

          Chris Fenton, the former president of DMG Entertainment who worked on U.S.-China co-productions like “Looper” and “Iron Man 3,” echoes the sentiment.

          “I think about every moment of my career with China, and it’s so obvious now…We could sell them fish as long as we taught them how to fish,” he says.

          Continues Fenton: “They wanted to create imitators and an industry that can compete with us on a world-class level. Now that they’ve done that, they have no motivation to allow any of our movies in. We need to stop trying to keep the status quo because the status quo is gone.”

          Huawei and some Chinese rivals are close to matching Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc., South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Britain’s Arm Ltd. at being able to design “bleeding edge” logic chips for smartphones, according to industry analysts.

          But when it comes to making them, foundries such as state-owned SMIC in Shanghai are up to a decade behind industry leaders including TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., which produces chips for Apple Inc. and other global brands.

          Even companies such as Alibaba that can design chips likely will need Taiwanese or other foreign foundries to make them. Alibaba’s Yitian 710 requires precision no Chinese foundry can achieve. The company declined to say which foreign producer it will use.

      Not an issue since China intends on invading Taiwan sometime in the next few years.

      • Yes. "Can Feminism Destroy China?" by Daniel Greenfield, Sultan Knish. I've talked before of how the one-child policy has led China to a demographic disaster. Greenfield focuses more specifically on how the one-child policy led to large discrepancies between the number of men and women in the population, and how the deficit of marriageable women has driven up the cost of getting married. But beyond this is that a growing number of women of marriageable age are turning their backs on marriage and raising a child. This should be of no surprise to long time readers of this blog. I've discussed demographics in length and that the surest way to get women to not have children is to educate them and let them work outside the home. The only exception to lower birth rates in industrialized countries are among groups that are highly religious and place children before career and affluence. On this point, Greenfield writes:
          But China’s problem is coming less from the traditional activist woke feminism, which the regime will have little trouble stamping out, but the larger economic shift in gender roles.

          52.5 percent of students in Chinese colleges and universities are female. That's not quite as extreme as the 60/40 split in the United States or the even more extreme gender gaps in some European countries, but in a decade or two, China may catch up to us there as well.

          Religion may be declining in America and Europe, but the Communists had done their best to stamp out faith in China and replace it with party loyalty. And then it replaced starving rural labor with mega-cities and mega-buildings filled with office drones who have no meaning or purpose in life beyond purchasing the latest iPhone, listening to the latest hit or watching the latest show.

          The single career women who have redefined the culture and politics of America and Europe are on the rise in China. In interviews they express a disinterest in marriage and family. They enjoy focusing on themselves, shopping, socializing and traveling with little interest in the future of their country or their society. They seek no meaning beyond the luxuries and comforts of life.
      “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”
       
      Malone says of this: "This headline is a nuclear truth bomb masquerading as an insurance agent’s dry manila envelope full of actuarial tables." Speaking of the experimental mRNA vaccines, he adds:

      It is starting to look to me like the largest experiment on human beings in recorded history has failed.  And, if this rather dry report from a senior Indiana life insurance executive holds true, then Reiner Fuellmich’s “Crimes against Humanity” push for convening new Nuremberg trials starts to look a lot less quixotic and a lot more prophetic.

      Earlier this month, Swedish Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson delivered her maiden speech as head of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and thus, the presumptive successor to longtime Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. Andersson began, predictably enough, by celebrating the triumph of the Swedish welfare state over the neoliberalism of the “grinning bankers on Wall Street.” Then, in a turn that shocked some loyal party members, Andersson directly addressed the country’s 2 million-odd refugees and migrants. “If you are young,” she said, “you must obtain a high school diploma and go on to get a job or higher education.” If you receive financial aid from the state, “you must learn Swedish and work a certain number of hours a week.” What’s more, “here in Sweden, both men and women work and contribute to welfare.” Swedish gender equality applies “no matter what fathers, mothers, spouses, or brothers think and feel.”

      Traub also explains how this reversal of open arms to immigrants came about: 

          Sweden had opened itself to the desperate people fleeing Middle Eastern civil wars and tyranny not because, like Germany, it had a terrible sin to expiate but rather out of a sense of universal moral obligation. Their Europe did not build walls. But, of course, the actual Europe of 2015 did just that, leaving very few countries—above all, Germany and Sweden—to bear the burden of what I then called “unshared idealism.” Nevertheless, Sweden’s leaders, like Germany’s, were prepared to shoulder that burden. Loyal social democrats, I found, were confident, almost complacent, about Sweden’s ability to integrate vast numbers of barely literate Afghan children and deeply pious and conservative Syrians, just as they had with cosmopolitan Bosnians and Iranians in past years. “A strong state can take care of many things,” the head of Sweden’s Left Party reassured me.

          Swedes have learned since 2015 that even the most benevolent state has its limits. In recent years, the country has suffered from soaring crime rates. According to a report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, over the last 20 years, Sweden has gone from having one of the lowest to one of the highest levels of gun violence in Europe—worse than Italy or eastern Europe. “The increase in gun homicide in Sweden is closely linked to criminal milieux in socially disadvantaged areas,” the report said. Gangs—whose members are second-generation immigrants, many from Somalia, Eritrea, Morocco, and elsewhere in North Africa—specialize in drug trafficking and the use of explosives. Crime has become the number one issue in Sweden; before she said a word about migration, Andersson boasted that her party added 7,000 new police officers, built more prisons, and drafted laws creating 30 new crimes. She decried “those who claim that it is certain cultures, certain languages, certain religions that make people more likely to commit crimes”—yet her own government has substantiated those claims.

          It’s hardly surprising that newcomers lag behind Swedes on every index of well-being, but the gap is very large. In a recent book, Mass Challenge: The Socioeconomic Impact of Migration to a Scandinavian Welfare State, Tino Sanandaji, an economist of Kurdish origin who has become a leading critic of Sweden’s migration policies, writes “foreign-born represent 53 percent of individuals with long prison sentences, 58 percent of the unemployed, and receive 65 percent of social welfare expenditures; 77 percent of Sweden’s child poverty is present in households with a foreign background, while 90 percent of suspects in public shootings have immigrant backgrounds.” Figures like these have become widely known; the number of Swedes who favor increased migration has dropped from 58 percent in 2015 to 40 percent today.

          Sweden is no longer a welcoming country and does not wish to be seen as one. In June 2016, the country revised its longstanding policy to deny refugees permanent asylum; those admitted were given temporary permits of either three months or three years, figures dictated by the minimum permissible under European Union rules. The law was meant to be a temporary response to the crisis of the previous fall, when the country literally ran out of places to put asylum-seekers; it has since been renewed. Last year, the country accepted only 13,000 refugees, the lowest number in 30 years. A recent study written by a senior Swedish migration official concludes that Norway and Denmark, both notoriously inhospitable to refugees, are “increasingly seen as positive examples of how to deal with refugees and international migration.”

      If you understand Sweden's role in undermining the governments of Rhodesia and apartheid era South Africa, there is a certain irony and karma about Sweden's current circumstances. In any event, Traub concludes:

       Of course, Sweden remains an enormously prosperous, relatively egalitarian, and quite safe country. It is rather some deep Swedish impulse that has died. Sweden asked too much of itself. Over the last 20 years, an ancient and homogeneous culture subjected itself—without any prior intention or even public debate—to a demographic transformation of breathtaking proportions. The United States slammed the gates of immigration shut in 1924 when the percentage of foreign-born citizens reached about 15 percent. That figure in Sweden is now 20 percent; and thanks to ongoing labor migration and family reunification, the number of migrants continues to grow every year by about 100,000 people (or almost 1 percent of the population). Virtually all of these migrants come from societies radically different from Sweden—less educated, less secular. In response, Sweden didn’t “die.” It changed cherished values to survive.

          Last month, she tweeted: “The CIA actually has a taskforce designed to try to predict where and when political instability and conflict is likely to break out around the world. It’s just not legally allowed to look at the US. That means we are blind to the risk factors that are rapidly emerging here.”

          The book in which Walter looks at those risk factors in the US, How Civil Wars Start, will be published in January. According to the Post, she writes: “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.”

          But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.

          “And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”

          Walter, the Post said, concludes that the US has passed through stages of “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” and may now be in “open conflict”, beginning with the Capitol riot.

          Citing analytics used by the Center for Systemic Peace, Walter also says the US has become an “anocracy” – “somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state”.

      Another Guardian article, by Stephen Marche, claims that "The next US civil war is already here – we just refuse to see it." Marche is one of those on the Left that has swallowed the "Jan. 6 was an insurrection" meme hook, line and sinker. Accordingly, he believes that the political Right has already committed itself to civil war, but that the Left hasn't yet realized it. Thus, he writes:

          At this supreme moment of crisis, the left has divided into warring factions completely incapable of confronting the seriousness of the moment. There are liberals who retain an unjustifiable faith that their institutions can save them when it is utterly clear that they cannot. Then there are the woke, educational and political elites dedicated to a discourse of willed impotence. Any institution founded by the woke simply eats itself – see TimesUp, the Women’s March, etc – becoming irrelevant to any but a diminishing cadre of insiders who spend most of their time figuring out how to shred whoever’s left. They render themselves powerless faster than their enemies can.

          What the American left needs now is allegiance, not allyship. It must abandon any imagined fantasies about the sanctity of governmental institutions that long ago gave up any claim to legitimacy. Stack the supreme court, end the filibuster, make Washington DC a state, and let the dogs howl, and now, before it is too late. The moment the right takes control of institutions, they will use them to overthrow democracy in its most basic forms; they are already rushing to dissolve whatever norms stand in the way of their full empowerment.

          The right has recognized what the left has not: that the system is in collapse. The right has a plan: it involves violence and solidarity. They have not abjured even the Oath Keepers. The left, meanwhile, has chosen infighting as their sport.

      This would be laughable except that Marche believes it. It doesn't matter that the woke command the pinnacles of power in the White House, the Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the military, entertainment and news media, social media, industry and finance. Conservatives have gained a bare majority in the Supreme Court after decades of liberal dominance and suddenly it is the end of the world as far as the Left is concerned. This is the consequence of empowering SCOTUS to amend the Constitution. If the Left cannot control the Constitution, then it is war as far as they are concerned.

          I found the article, "Brookings: How Seriously Should We Take Talk Of U.S. Secession?" by Hunter Wallace at Occidental Dissent interesting in this regard. Wallace notes a Brookings Institute article citing several polls showing surprisingly strong support for state secession from the United States. Wallace then writes:

          I tried to look beyond the Trump presidency in September 2015.

          I saw it as something that we would have to go through to create the level of polarization necessary for secession to even become conceivable. The Trump presidency would prove to be a mirage where these people thought that they had succeeded in “Taking Back America.” When they eventually were confronted with reality, it would radicalize them. This has since come to pass.

          Looking ahead, we’re going to give “Taking Back America” another whirl. The Democrats are going to fall apart due to inflation and their own contradictions. Your Favorite President is going to launch his 2024 Revenge Tour after the midterms. Trump and the GOP are going to be restored to power on “Let’s Go Brandon” and will predictably squander it. The Democrats will get even crazier and the polarization and division will intensify and ratchet up to the next level. If we are lucky, California will secede.

          It is my belief that conservatives will not be the ones to start a civil war, but that it will come from the progressives and others on the political left. If the Left believes that such a conflict started when a bunch of people walked through the halls of Congress, then I would respond that it started with the BLM and Antifa riots and the Covid lockdowns that broke Mainstreet but enriched Wall Street and the liberal billionaires. 

          Oswald Spengler predicted that the West would ultimately fall victim to Caesarism, so I can't disagree that the U.S. is, at the least, an “anocracy.” But the Caesarism began with FDR, a product of the same time and similar forces that produced Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. FDR and his successors were never able to quite achieve the control that those other leaders possessed--victims of America's respect for rule of law, Christian principles, the guarantees in the Constitution (including the inclusion of an amendment post-FDR limiting the number of terms a president could serve), and the fact of a heavily armed population.  All but the latter have been seriously eroded across the United States. Nevertheless, the Left believe that they have the resources to fundamentally change America and win any potential armed conflict that results; thus, the increased chatter about a possible civil war.


      VIDEO: "Cody Lundin's National Park Service PSA: Water Disinfection" (4 min.)

      And Now For Something Completely Different:

      • "Winnie the Pooh and Jim Morrison copyrights set to expire in 2022"--The Washington Examiner. We will finally be able to read the story of when terror and murder strike the Hundred Acre Wood. (Hint: surely it is no coincidence that John Fiedler voiced Piglet in the Winnie the Pooh movie as well as played the role of Jack the Ripper in the original Star Trek series episode "Wolf In The Fold").
      • Not something you see everyday: "North Idaho murder suspect faces cannibalism charge"--KREM2. The article reports that "Bonner County Prosecutor Louis Marshall filed an amended criminal complaint on Wednesday charging James David Russell, 39, of cannibalism in relation to the Sept. 10 murder of David Flaget." Also:
          Dr. Veena Singh completed the autopsy Sept. 13, finding that the tissues discovered in Russell’s residence belonged to Flaget. Some of Flaget’s remains have yet to be found. 

          A bloodied microwave and glass bowl were among the items seized in the search along with a bloodied knife and duffel bag. 

          “When dealing with death and carnage it’s a shock to our conscience,” Bonner County Detective Phillip Stella said Thursday. “As far as I know, this is the first cannibalism charge in Idaho.” 
          According to a new documentary out of Denmark, which interviewed former victims, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly carried out experiments on 311 orphaned children. The experiments were meant to reveal psychopathic traits and map out the link between schizophrenia and heredity. According to the report, the children were tortured in clear violation of the Nuremberg Code of 1947 that introduced ethical restrictions for experiments on humans.

          Hundreds of Danish orphans were unknowingly used in experiments backed by the CIA, according to Danish Radio, reporting on a new documentary called “The Search for Myself.”

          According to the report, the experiments began in the early 1960s and spanned the course of two decades. They were conducted to investigate the link between heredity and environment in the development of schizophrenia. However, the children were not told what research they were involved in. Not even after the experiments ended. It was also funded in part by a CIA front associated with the MK-Ultra program.

          Eerily, the examinations took place in a basement at the Municipal Hospital in Copenhagen. The director and producer of the documentary, Per Wennick, was actually a victim of the CIA and subjected to these experiments as a child. In the documentary, he recalled being placed in a chair, getting electrodes put on his arms, legs, and chest around the heart and having to listen to loud, shrill noises, which attempted to incite a psychological response.

      “It was very uncomfortable”, Wennick told Danish Radio.

      “And it’s not just my story, it’s the story of many children.”

      By his own admission, he was promised “something funny” before being taken to the hospital.

      “I think this is a violation of my rights as a citizen in this society. I find it so strange that some people should know more about me than I myself have been aware of.”

      According to historian, PhD, and museum inspector at the Danish Welfare Museum, Jacob Knage Rasmussen, this was the only known experiment in Danish history that used children under state care for research — and it was funded by the CIA in violation of the Nuremberg Code.

          The Commerce Department imposed sanctions on Chinese technology companies and announced recently that China’s military is engaged in dangerous work related to “brain control” warfare research.

          The announcement of the sanctions provided limited specific details of the work by China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 11 related Chinese research institutes. Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security said only that the academy and its affiliates are using “biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end-uses and end-users, to include purported brain-control weaponry.”

          However, three reports by the People’s Liberation Army obtained by Inside the Ring shed light on the depths of China’s brain warfare research and show that it has been underway for several years.

          The translated 2019 reports discuss developing brain control weaponry as part of what Chinese officials call the “intelligentization” of warfare.

          According to one of the reports, advances in science and technology are leading to upgrades in methods and the ability to subdue enemies. “War has started to shift from the pursuit of destroying bodies to paralyzing and controlling the opponent,” said the report headlined, “The Future of the Concept of Military Supremacy.”

          “The focus is to attack the enemy’s will to resist, not physical destruction,” it stated.

          Brain science is being used to extend warfare in the sphere of human consciousness “causing the brain to become the main target of offense and defense of new concept weapons,” the report added.

          “To win without fighting is no longer far-fetched,” it stated, quoting ancient strategist Sun Tzu’s maxim.

          The report, which was published in the official military newspaper PLA Daily, also asserted that China is merging four major technology fields for military purposes: nano, bio, information and cognition.

          The intended result will be enhanced individual capabilities. “Future human-machine merging will revolve around the contest for the brain,” the report said. “The two combatant sides will use various kinds of brain control technologies and effective designs to focus on taking over the enemy’s way of thinking and his awareness, and even directly intervene in the thinking of the enemy leaders and staff, and with that produce war to control awareness and thinking,” the report said.  

          People think of reading as the introvert’s hobby: A quiet activity for a person who likes quiet, save for the voices in their head. But in the 5,000 or so years humans have been writing, reading as we conceive it, an asocial solo activity with a book, is a relatively new form of leisure.

          For centuries, Europeans who could read did so aloud. The ancient Greeks read their texts aloud. So did the monks of Europe’s dark ages. But by the 17th century, reading society in Europe had changed drastically. Text technologies, like moveable type, and the rise of vernacular writing helped usher in the practice we cherish today: taking in words without saying them aloud, letting them build a world in our heads.

          Among scholars, there is a surprisingly fierce debate around when European society transitioned from mostly reading aloud to mostly reading silently—some even say the ancients read silently just as much as they read aloud—but there is one scene in literature they agree is crucial. In St. Augustine’s Confessions, the titular professor describes the reading habits of Ambrose, the bishop of Milan:

      But when Ambrose used to read, his eyes were drawn through the pages, while his heart searched for its meaning; however, his voice and tongue were quiet. Often when we were present—for anyone could approach him and it was not his habit that visitors be announced to him—we saw him reading in this fashion, silently and never otherwise.

      The fact that this was so remarkable to Augustine, some scholars argue, is because in the 400s, silent reading wasn’t really a thing.

       Read the whole thing. It is up to you whether you want to do so quietly or out loud.

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      2 comments:

      1. John WilderJanuary 6, 2022 at 10:27 PM

        The "new" Marines might only be good for fishing.

        ReplyDelete
        Replies
        1. DocentJanuary 7, 2022 at 10:26 AM

          Israel has a long history of using female soldiers, so their experience should have taught us that women are not going to be as effective in combat as men and are more likely to suffer injuries like broken bones and low back injuries because they just can't carry as much as men. Heck, our military's own studies have shown the same.

          Delete

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      Gruesome Deaths and Attacks #3

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