Book Review: "All Things Provident" by Tamara Price

(Source)

So you have stocked up your long term food supply, and now have buckets, cans and jars of wheat, "Maggie Moo" dehydrated milk (the best, IMHO), dried beans, various fruits, and so on. Now what do you do with it? There are several cookbooks on the market that have a general focus on using food stores, and one that my wife has used and enjoyed is All Things Provident: Inspiring ideas to help use your food storage, manage your finances, and prepare for emergencies by Tamara Price ($17.99 through Amazon). The author also runs her own website--All Things Provident--with additional recipes, prepping ideas, activities, and so on.

The book is split into three main sections: Food Storage (including recipes), which takes up the bulk of the book; Finances (basically on how to create and follow budgets and live within your means); and Emergency Preparedness (some information on making 72-hour kits and some other basic information). She finishes up with a chapter entitled "Getting It All Done" which delves into ideas on managing your time, ideas for incorporating the preps into your daily life, involving your family members, and so on. Finally, she has an appendix with some example forms and lists.

Since the Food Storage portion takes up two-thirds of the book--and was the reason for our having bought the book--I will just outline the individual sub-sections:

• Food Storage Hurdles
• Creating a 3-Month Meal Plan
• Using Your Freezer
• Storable Meals
• Storable Snacks
• Storable Desserts
• Cooking with Whole Wheat
• Bread Making
• Pantry Mix Recipes
• Cooking with Dry Beans
• Using Powdered Milk
• White Sauce Mix Recipes
• Using Garden Produce
• Preserving Your Harvest
• Just for Kids

In short, the author takes you from the very beginning of a food storage program to building up stores, and then offering many recipes so you can make use of the food storage. The recipes are scattered throughout the book. So, for instance, in the chapter on "Using Your Freezer," the author discusses the "why" of using a freezer, lists the types of food items she keeps in her freezer, and then offers a dozen or so recipes using some or all of those food items.

The chapter on "Storable Meals" is a guide to making meals where at least some ingredients are prepared before hand (for instance, storing hamburger that has already browned) or part of your regular food storage (e.g., substituting reconstituted powdered milk for fresh milk; canned or dried fruits for fresh fruits); or canning some items rather than using dried versions. Many of the meals can be quickly prepared.

I would also note that these are not "bland" meals: the author offers recipes for many American favorites as well as "ethnic" dishes (including Mexican style or Italian style). To us, this is the most important points about this book: unlike others in this category, this book actually shows how to make palatable (some actually quite tasty) meals from your food storage. It shows how to use your food storage on a daily basis (thus saving money), rather than merely in an emergency.

We have, of course, our favorite recipes; and others that we tried out that we didn't like. And, if you are already experienced with food storage and using it, some the basic information may not be as of much use. The author is LDS, and some of her comments are directed at an LDS audience, but don't let this turn you off if you are not LDS--it is only in the sections about getting the right mind-set, and discussing the importance of paying tithing. There is, obviously, nothing LDS specific on making bread or a breakfast burrito.

We found some favorite meals from this book, that we frequently use (we've been using this book for almost 4 years). So, although we've looked at (and collected) cook books oriented toward using food storage, this is our favorite. So, check out the author's web-site for an example of some recipes and ideas and, if you like it, try the book.

California Flash Floods and Mud Slides

I had noted only just yesterday (in a comment about the El Nino), that increased rainfall in southern California would result in more flash floods and mud slides because of the loss of vegetation to help absorb the moisture and prevent erosion.  Today, The Daily Mail ran this headline: "Violent storms and flash floods cause chaos in California as 5ft-deep mud engulfs cars and traps people inside homes north of LA." Fortunately, there were no fatalities according to the article. Here are a couple articles discussing what to do if you happen to be in a car caught in a flash flood:

• "Flash Flooding: Your Vehicle Can Be Biggest Danger"--The Weather Channel.
• "Tips for Drivers Caught in a Flash Flood"--ABC News.

From the latter article: "Underwater rescue experts have a handy acronym for motorists to keep in mind, POGGO. It stands for: First, pop your seat belt. Next, open a window. Then grab your baby and go."

Armed Afghan "Refugees" Try to Fight Their Way Into Bulgaria

Radio Free Europe reports:

An Afghan migrant was shot dead October 15 in a scuffle between Bulgarian border authorities and a group of migrants believed to all be from Afghanistan, Bulgarian government authorities said.

A fight and exchange of gunfire broke out after border authorities tried to seize around 40 illegal immigrants who had crossed the border from Turkey.

All of the migrants were men, some of them armed, authorities said. The migrant who was shot died on his way to the hospital. An investigation is underway.

The original AFP report indicated:

Public BNR radio cited ministry sources as saying that the group of 48 illegal migrants from Afghanistan was armed and aggressive and refused to obey an order by the Bulgarian border guards to stop and turn back.

The main stream media is already spinning the story, to eliminate or downplay the fact that the group was armed, just mentioning (deep down into the story) that it was unconfirmed if any were armed, with Yahoo changing its story without any notice.

We Didn't Start The Fire

To anyone who reads the scriptures, particularly those dealing with "the end times," the decay of our civilization is clearly foretold. Chapter 3 of Isaiah is particularly distressing, because, although on the surface discussing the decay of David and Solomon's empire, it is applicable to any great society that has fallen into corruption and decay. There, we read that both the leadership of God and that of responsible leaders will be taken away, to be replaced by the immature and incompetent: "And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them." "And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour." "The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not." In this regard, the Lord makes specific reference to the behavior of the women produced by such a culture: vain, haughty and openly sexual (e.g., cougars); enamored of ostentatious and tawdry clothes, jewelry, and other fashions (e.g., fashionistas).

While we think of the latter as being a consequence of the so-called "sexual revolution" and feminism--and, thus, having appeared within only the last several decades--such a viewpoint is incorrect. Long time readers know that I periodically write about Oswald Spengler's forecast of the decline of civilization, including what he referred to, in the 1920's, as the Ibsen woman:

The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of “mutual understanding.” It is all the same whether the case against children is the American lady’s who would not miss a season for anything, or the Parisienne’s who fears that her lover would leave her, or an Ibsen heroine’s who “lives for herself”—they all belong to themselves and they are all unfruitful.

A more modern description of the Ibsen woman--or "new woman" (as opposed to the Victorian, or "old," woman--was given by Gail Finney:

The New Woman typically values self-fulfillment and independence rather than the stereotypically feminine ideal of self-sacrifice; believes in legal and sexual equality; often remains single because of the difficulty of combining such equality with marriage; is more open about her sexuality than the 'Old Woman'; is well-educated and reads a great deal; has a job; is athletic or otherwise physically vigorous and, accordingly, prefers comfortable clothes (sometimes male attire) to traditional female garb.

 But feminism had reared its head long before Spengler. In 1890, Ragnar Redbeard (a pseudonym) published "Might is Right," in which he observed:

There is nothing particularly inviting about barren, dyspeptic, blue-stocking ‘New Women,’ in pants and spectacles; talking idiotic snuffle through their noses; with busts made of adjustable india-rubber; with narrow or padded hips, and “wheels between their legs,” scorching across the curbstones like mad. When such women are ‘captured’ what good are they? They won’t even breed; or if they do so (by accident) their puny embryos, have to be delicately nurtured into life with steam-heated incubator-mechanism and afterwards fed and weaned on ‘the bottle.’ The sons of such women — bottle fed abortions — of what good are they?

It is women of this kind (unnatural monsters they are) that cause so much domestic unhappiness. They have been “educated” along false lines, filled with bookish artificialism, and thereafter when called upon to take up their maternal duty, they are organic incapables. Hence the divorce court scandals — the fruit of wholesale degeneracy — encouraged by State interference with domestic affairs.

“Our times, in sin prolific, first
The marriage bed with taint have cursed,
And family and home —
This is the fountain head of all,
The sorrows and the ills that fall —
On Romans and on Rome.”
Horace

Gradually the curse of ‘Law’ invades the privacy of every home. It encourages emotional feminines to defy husbands, and Deify an irresponsible Authority [i.e., the State]. In other words it deliberately promotes unfaithfulness and unlimited free-love. It undermines the husband’s Control, but at what a dreadful cost? With the “equalization” of women comes wholesale panmixia — scientific concubinage, State-regulated polyandry, and the poisoning of all inter-family intercourse. When average women find in Statute Law a “deliverer” and a “champion” more powerful than their husbands and brothers, they become both unfaithful and profligate — especially if “well educated.” Then it cometh to pass (as in all ages of connubial decadence) “no man knoweth his own father.” Is not that the practical tendency of the times? Again, is that ‘tendency’ itself not the horrible result of State-Paternalism — of majority-box dictation — of Statecraft and Priestcraft? The Church lives by the functional emotionalism of women. Thus the Individual wanes and the State grows more and more. In natural society, every woman’s husband is to her, both priest and king. When the baleful shadow of politics and preacherisms, looms over the marriage bed, dreadful days are at hand.

 And there, in a nutshell, is the result of the breakdown of the family due to feminism, including the rise of the single mother households; where the father is absent (if not unknown), replaced by the State and its subsidy. The difference is that, in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the Ibsen woman was a product of, and existed within, the upper strata of society. Now, it is found at all levels.

Studies Confirm that Ebola Can Be Transmitted Sexually

Time magazine has published an article noting two recent medical papers that confirm that Ebola can be transmitted sexually. The first paper confirmed that a woman (who later died) had contracted Ebola from her sexual partner. The second paper reported the results of a study of 93 men who survived an Ebola infection, which found that some men still produce semen samples that test positive for Ebola nine months after they presented symptoms of the disease.

So, in a matter of decades, we have seen Ebola change from a disease that killed nearly everyone to a slightly less deadly disease on its way to becoming an STD. Eventually, like chicken pox or measles, it could become a rather benign illness. But it is this intermediate stage--still deadly, but able to spread more easily--when it is at its most dangerous.

"Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?"--Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy

Instapundit linked to an article entitled "Harvard University Study Reveals Astonishing Link Between Firearms, Crime and Gun Control," which, in turn, summarizes the findings of an article published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy entitled "Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence" by Don B. Kates and Gary Mauser (cite: 30 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 649 (2007)). Fortunately, I was able to locate a copy of the latter article. Kates and Mouser state, in their introduction (footnotes and table omitted):

International evidence and comparisons have long been offered as proof of the mantra that more guns mean more deaths and that fewer guns, therefore, mean fewer deaths. Unfortunately, such discussions are all too often been afflicted by misconceptions and factual error and focus on comparisons that are unrepresentative. It may be useful to begin with a few examples. There is a compound assertion that (a) guns are uniquely available in the United States compared with other modern developed nations, which is why (b) the United States has by far the highest murder rate. Though these assertions have been endlessly repeated, statement (b) is, in fact, false and statement (a) is substantially so.

Since at least 1965, the false assertion that the United States has the industrialized world's highest murder rate has been an artifact of politically motivated Soviet minimization designed to hide the true homicide rates. Since well before that date, the Soviet Union possessed extremely stringent gun controls that were effectuated by a police state apparatus providing stringent enforcement. So successful was that regime that few Russian civilians now have firearms and very few murders involve them. Yet, manifest success in keeping its people disarmed did not prevent the Soviet Union from having far and away the highest murder rate in the developed world. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the gun-less Soviet Union's murder rates paralleled or generally exceeded those of gun-ridden America. While American rates stabilized and then steeply declined, however, Russian murder increased so drastically that by the early 1990s the Russian rate was three times higher than that of the United States. Between 1998-2004 (the latest figure available for Russia), Russian murder rates were nearly four times higher than American rates. Similar murder rates also characterize the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and various other now-independent European nations of the former U.S.S.R. Thus, in the United States and the former Soviet Union transitioning into current-day Russia, “homicide results suggest that where guns are scarce other weapons are substituted in killings.” While American gun ownership is quite high, Table 1 shows many other developed nations (e.g., Norway, Finland, Germany, France, Denmark) with high rates of gun ownership. These countries, however, have murder rates as low or lower than many developed nations in which gun ownership is much rarer. For example, Luxembourg, where handguns are totally banned and ownership of any kind of gun is minimal, had a murder rate nine times higher than Germany in 2002.

The same pattern appears when comparisons of violence to gun ownership are made within nations. Indeed, “data on firearms ownership by constabulary area in England,” like data from the United States, show “a negative correlation,” that is, “where firearms are most dense violent crime rates are lowest, and where guns are least dense violent crime rates are highest.” Many different data sets from various kinds of sources are summarized as follows by the leading text:

[T]here is no consistent significant positive association between gun ownership levels and violence rates: across (1) time within the United States, (2) U.S. cities, (3) counties within Illinois, (4) country-sized areas like England, U.S. states, (5) regions of the United States, (6) nations, or (7) population subgroups ....

A second misconception about the relationship between firearms and violence attributes Europe's generally low homicide rates to stringent gun control. That attribution cannot be accurate since murder in Europe was at an all-time low before the gun controls were introduced. For instance, virtually the only English gun control during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the practice that police patrolled without guns. During this period gun control prevailed far less in England or Europe than in certain American states which nevertheless had—and continue to have—murder rates that were and are comparatively very high. 

In this connection, two recent studies are pertinent. In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its evaluation from a review of 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some original empirical research. It failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents. The same conclusion was reached in 2003 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's review of then-extant studies. 

Stringent gun controls were not adopted in England and Western Europe until after World War I. Consistent with the outcomes of the recent American studies just mentioned, these strict controls did not stem the general trend of ever-growing violent crime throughout the post-WWII industrialized world including the United States and Russia. Professor Malcolm's study of English gun law and violent crime summarizes that nation's nineteenth and twentieth century experience as follows: 

The peacefulness England used to enjoy was not the result of strict gun laws. When it had no firearms restrictions [nineteenth and early twentieth century] England had little violent crime, while the present extraordinarily stringent gun controls have not stopped the increase in violence or even the increase in armed violence.  

Armed crime, never a problem in England, has now become one. Handguns are banned but the Kingdom has millions of illegal firearms. Criminals have no trouble finding them and exhibit a new willingness to use them. In the decade after 1957, the use of guns in serious crime increased a hundredfold. 

In the late 1990s, England moved from stringent controls to a complete ban of all handguns and many types of long guns. Hundreds of thousands of guns were confiscated from those owners law-abiding enough to turn them in to authorities. Without suggesting this caused violence, the ban's ineffectiveness was such that by the year 2000 violent crime had so increased that England and Wales had Europe's highest violent crime rate, far surpassing even the United States. Today, English news media headline violence in terms redolent of the doleful, melodramatic language that for so long characterized American news reports. One aspect of England's recent experience deserves note, given how often and favorably advocates have compared English gun policy to its American counterpart over the past 35 years. A generally unstated issue in this notoriously emotional debate was the effect of the Warren Court and later restrictions on police powers on American gun policy. Critics of these decisions pointed to soaring American crime rates and argued simplistically that such decisions caused, or at least hampered, police in suppressing crime. But to some supporters of these judicial decisions, the example of England argued that the solution to crime was to restrict guns, not civil liberties. To gun control advocates, England, the cradle of our liberties, was a nation made so peaceful by strict gun control that its police did not even need to carry guns. The United States, it was argued, could attain such a desirable situation by radically reducing gun ownership, preferably by banning and confiscating handguns. 

The results discussed earlier contradict those expectations. On the one hand, despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s. On the other hand, the same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and dramatic increase in violent crime to which England's response was ever-more drastic gun control including, eventually, banning and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns. Nevertheless, criminal violence rampantly increased so that by 2000 England surpassed the United States to become one of the developed world's most violence-ridden nations. 

To conserve the resources of the inundated criminal justice system, English police no longer investigate burglary and “minor assaults.” As of 2006, if the police catch a mugger, robber, or burglar, or other “minor” criminal in the act, the policy is to release them with a warning rather than to arrest and prosecute them. It used to be that English police vehemently opposed the idea of armed policing. Today, ever more police are being armed. Justifying the assignment of armed squads to block roads and carry out random car searches, a police commander asserts: “It is a massive deterrent to gunmen if they think that there are going to be armed police.” How far is that from the rationale on which 40 American states have enacted laws giving qualified, trained citizens the right to carry concealed guns? Indeed, news media editorials have appeared in England arguing that civilians should be allowed guns for defense. There is currently a vigorous controversy over proposals (which the Blair government first endorsed but now opposes) to amend the law of self-defense to protect victims from prosecution for using deadly force against burglars. 

The divergence between the United States and the British Commonwealth became especially pronounced during the 1980s and 1990s. During these two decades, while Britain and the Commonwealth were making lawful firearm ownership increasingly difficult, more than 25 states in the United States passed laws allowing responsible citizens to carry concealed handguns. There are now 40 states where qualified citizens can obtain such a handgun permit. As a result, the number of U.S. citizens allowed to carry concealed handguns in shopping malls, on the street, and in their cars has grown to 3.5 million men and women. Economists John Lott and David Mustard have suggested that these new laws contributed to the drop in homicide and violent crime rates. Based on 25 years of correlated statistics from all of the more than 3,000 American counties, Lott and Mustard conclude that adoption of these statutes has deterred criminals from confrontation crime and caused murder and violent crime to fall faster in states that adopted this policy than in states that did not. 

As indicated in the preceding footnote, the notion that more guns reduce crime is highly controversial. What the controversy has obscured from view is the corrosive effect of the Lott and Mustard work on the tenet that more guns equal more murder. As previously stated, adoption of state laws permitting millions of qualified citizens to carry guns has not resulted in more murder or violent crime in these states. Rather, adoption of these statutes has been followed by very significant reductions in murder and violence in these states. 

To determine whether this expansion of gun availability caused reductions in violent crime requires taking account of various other factors that might also have contributed to the decline. For instance, two of Lott's major critics, Donohue and Levitt, attribute much of the drop in violent crime that started in 1990s to the legalization of abortion in the 1970s, which they argue resulted in the non-birth of vast numbers of children who would have been disproportionately involved in violent crime had they existed in the 1990s. 

The Lott-Mustard studies did not address the Donohue-Levitt thesis. Lott and Mustard did account, however, for two peculiarly American phenomena which many people believed may have been responsible for the 1990s crime reduction: the dramatic increase of the United States prison population and the number of executions. The prison population in the United States tripled during this time period, jumping from approximately 100 prisoners per 100,000 in the late 1970s to more than 300 per 100,000 people in the general population in the early 1990s. In addition, executions in the United States soared from approximately 5 per year in the early 1980s to more than 27 per year in the early 1990s. Neither of these trends is reflected in Commonwealth countries. 

Although the reason is thus obscured, the undeniable result is that violent crime, and homicide in particular, has plummeted in the United States over the past 15 years. The fall in the American crime rate is even more impressive when compared with the rest of the world. In 18 of the 25 countries surveyed by the British Home Office, violent crime increased during the 1990s. This contrast should induce thoughtful people to wonder what happened in those nations, and to question policies based on the notion that introducing increasingly more restrictive firearm ownership laws reduces violent crime. Perhaps the United States is doing something right in promoting firearms for law-abiding responsible adults. Or perhaps the United States' success in lowering its violent crime rate relates to increasing its prison population or its death sentences. Further research is required to identify more precisely which elements of the United States' approach are the most important, or whether all three elements acting in concert were necessary to reduce violent crimes.

Kates and Mauser go on to debunk many other myths argued by the gun control proponents. For instance, to the mantra that you are more likely to be killed with a gun in your own home (implying that the common citizen is likely to commit a murder), they point out that "almost all murderers are extremely aberrant individuals with life histories of violence, psychopathology, substance abuse, and other dangerous behaviors."

Indeed, murderers generally fall into a group some criminologists have called “violent predators,” sharply differentiating them not only from the overall population but from other criminals as well. Surveys of imprisoned felons indicate that when not imprisoned the ordinary felon averages perhaps 12 crimes per year. In contrast, “violent predators” spend much or most of their time committing crimes, averaging at least 5 assaults, 63 robberies, and 172 burglaries annually.

(Footnotes omitted). Also (footnotes omitted):

Contrary to what should be the case if more guns equal more death, there are no “consistent indications of a link between gun ownership and criminal or violent behavior by owners;” in fact, gun ownership is “higher among whites than among blacks, higher among middle-aged people than among young people, higher among married than among unmarried people, higher among richer people than poor”—all “patterns that are the reverse of the way in which criminal behavior is distributed.”

"Thus preventing law-abiding, responsible [Americans] from owning guns does nothing at all to reduce murderers, because they are not the ones who are doing the killing."

A historical analysis of murder rates and gun ownership also shows a negative correlation between firearm ownership and murders, with the most dramatic difference showing up after the Civil War, which saw large numbers of surplus military weapons (including revolvers) being sold to the public and an increased number of cheap pocket pistols, while, at the same time, the United States saw a substantive decline in murder rates as compared to prior to the Civil War.

Kates and Mauser do not delve into suicide rates as much. However, Table 4 in their article indicates that, comparing Continental Europe to the United States, all of the following countries had higher suicide rates than the United States, although they had much lower firearm ownership rates: Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Hungary, Ukraine, Slovenia, Finland, Denmark, Croatia, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Anyway, if you can procure a copy, Kates' and Mauser's article makes for an interesting read.

Winchester .30-30 Silvertip

Winchester .30-30 Silvertip

I hadn't posted one of my own photos for a while, so here ya go: some rounds from an old box of ammo.

House Guests, Teaching Moments, and New Guns

Three disparate topics, but my comments aren't really worth separate posts.

House Guests:

You may remember that, earlier this year, I had mentioned that my sister-in-law (my wife's sister) had died, and my brother-in-law and his son were going to be moving in with us for a short while while he found work in this area. My wife and I envisioned that they would be with us for only two or three weeks, given that he quickly found a job, and had found a buyer for his house within a week of putting it up for sale. But the two or three weeks turned into just over 2 months when we finally had to have the talk with him, and it will be over three months by the time he moves into his apartment.

The reason I am airing family issues like this is because it has some important lessons for anyone thinking of taking in family or friends after the SHTF, or even more "mundane" incidents like our family events of this past summer. Some lessons learned:

• Clearly set expectations. I had concerns about how long my brother-in-law and his son would be staying, so I had at the offset discussed with him that he would need to get into an apartment before looking for a house, because he wasn't probably wasn't going to get into a house quickly, and it would give him time to settle into his new job, get his son settled into school, etc. I had a similar discussion with after his first month here. The problem was that this type of friendly discussion was not direct enough to supersede his personal preference to get into a house as soon as he could. In retrospect, I should have told him more clearly that we were only hosting him until he found an apartment, and discussed our respective goals and expectations about the length of his stay.
• Don't Wait Too Long Before Clarifying Expectations. As a consequence of not confronting him earlier about getting into an apartment, his attitude had changed from being grateful for our helping him move and letting him and his son stay here, to his being upset that we were not willing to let them stay longer.
• Resentment Can Easily Build. Although we never had specific expectations about his helping out, after he started getting pay checks from his new job and was sitting on a tidy profit from the sale of his house in Seattle, his failure to offer to help with grocery expenses or with chores (and taking off with his son whenever our family started into house work or yard work), began to rub the wrong way. I changed from feeling welcoming to being seriously annoyed.
• Families Need Private Time. As Benjamin Franklin pointed out, both fish and guests begin to stink after a few days. Having guests disrupts normal family activities and schedules, and it is stressful to accommodate different personalities, habits, preferences as to food and entertainment, and so on. I remember when I first read James Wesley Rawles' book, Patriots, I thought that a group of people that large, living in such close quarters for so long, would not be the domestic bliss portrayed, but probably result in a serious fight and dissolution of the group. I'm convinced, more than ever, that I am correct.

Teaching Moments:

This weekend, I took my kids to a Renaissance Fair. On the way, we apparently ran over a screw or nail, and wound up with a flat tire. Surprisingly (to myself), rather than be upset, I saw it as a great opportunity to show my younger sons how to change a tire. So, I had them watch and explained everything I was doing, and why.

New Guns:

Last weekend, I had some time to sneak out to shoot a friend's new S&W revolver. However, it didn't go very well because the cylinder was only irregularly advancing, not turning about half of the time when cocked, whether single action or double action. It was not an issue of the cylinder binding. In investigating the issue more closely, I determined that the problem had to do with the "foot" not engaging the cylinder to turn it when cocking the firearm. After some extended dry firing and repeated cocking, the problem seem to disappear. I can only presume that there was bur left over from manufacturing or a bit of grit that was interfering with the foot. It was a good reminder that new firearms must be broken in, and thoroughly vetted, before being depending upon for self-protection or hunting.

Homemade Thermal Lance Kit

Looks interesting.

How To Survive A Shipwreck

Not a complete guide, but has some useful ideas. I wish it had more information on how to make the water still out of supplies you might have on a life-boat or salvaged from a wreck.