March 17, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Video: "ARES SCR Generation 2 Review"--The Firearms Blog channel. A positive review.

Firearms/Self-Defense:

• ".380’s Sales Surge…Again"--The Truth About Guns. Quoting an article at Fox News: “Production of the super-small handgun is at a 16-year high, with nearly 900,000 made in the U.S. in 2014, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”
• "Choosing the ‘pool gun’ for your family and home defense: what’s best?"--Grant Cunningham. Some tips and suggestions for selecting a firearm that could be picked up and used by anyone in your family. One tip: "When picking a gun to fit all family members, remember that in general it’s easier for someone to deal with a too-small firearm than one which is too large; this is especially true if the person using the smaller gun is more highly trained or skilled."
• "Detecting Hidden Cameras: A Basic Introduction To Counter Surveillance"--Schafer's Self Defense Corner. First, deal with the obvious: "The first thing you should do is go over to the desk and find that notepad they leave for you, normally over by the phone, and tear off the top piece.  Take a piece of tape and tape that paper over top of the peephole in your door, if you don’t have any tape you should be able to ball it up and jam it inside, just make sure it doesn’t fall out." Next cover cameras on your smart phone, tablet, or computer, and unplug the television. Then move on to the less obvious. Read the whole thing.
• "The MAS-49 Was the Foreign Legion’s Favorite Rifle"--War is Boring.

Survival/Prepping:

• "How to Carve 7 Pot Hooks for Classic Camp Cooking"--Survival Sherpa. The primary topic of the article is how to carve and assemble hooks for hanging a pot over a fire or bed of coals. However, the author also discusses what makes a knife suitable for carving these items.
• "Surviving in a Refugee Camp: How to earn a living when you have nothing."--Modern Survivalist. No, not a discussion of the oldest profession, but what anyone can do. The top job seems to be selling prepaid telephone cards.
• "The Top 4 Bartering Skills You’ll Need When the Economy Fails"--Survive the Apocalypse. The essential skills that the author lists are: (i) effective communication skills; (ii) building credibility; (iii) developing a higher emotional IQ; and (iv) networking more effectively to influence others. In short, the skills necessary to be a good salesman. The article has links to more information on each topic.

Other Stuff:

• "Why female violence against men is society's last great taboo"--The Telegraph. The article mostly discusses domestic violence, and notes that more women are being charged and convicted for domestic violence against their spouses.

• Related: "Woman As Aggressor: The Unspoken Truth Of Domestic Violence"--Mint Press News. A 2014 article on this topic, which notes: "In fact, in the 71 percent of nonreciprocal partner violence instances, the instigator was the woman."

• Related: "Women are more violent, says study"--The Independent. An article from 2000 on the same topic.

• "Bullet casings disappear from LaVoy Finicum shooting scene, sources say"--Oregon Live. Oregon state investigators are disputing the FBI's account of the shooting, and suggest that evidence at the scene was removed.
• "Relatives Of Teen Shot While Robbing Home: ‘How He Gonna Get His Money?’"--The Daily Caller. "'You have to look at it from every child’s point of view that was raised in the hood. You have to understand, how he gonna get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point of view,' Johnson’s cousin Nautika Harris said." The predator mentality.
• "Out-of-Work Chinese Government Hackers May Be Behind Sophisticated Ransomware Attacks"--MIT Technology Review. Exactly the type of thing about which the Anonymous Conservative has been warning.
• "Many scientific “truths” are, in fact, false"--Quartz. 

In 2005, John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, published a paper, “Why most published research findings are false,” mathematically showing that a huge number of published papers must be incorrect. He also looked at a number of well-regarded medical research findings, and found that, of 34 that had been retested, 41% had been contradicted or found to be significantly exaggerated.

Since then, researchers in several scientific areas have consistently struggled to reproduce major results of prominent studies. By some estimates, at least 51%—and as much as 89%—of published papers are based on studies and experiments showing results that cannot be reproduced.

• "The 30% solution — when war without end ends: Spengler"--David P. Goldman at the Asia Times. "Nations do not fight to the death, but they frequently fight until their pool of prospective fighters has reached a point of practical exhaustion. In most cases, this involves reaching the 30% mark where casualties are concerned." The implications is that rather than attempting to reduce casualties among the enemy forces, the goal should be to inflict as heavy of casualties as possible.
• "Betting on Gray Sludge: What Fun"--Peter Grant. Grant considers and then discounts the idea that Americans will attempt to secede, start a civil war, elevate a dictator, or otherwise attempt to take back control of the government. Instead:

That leaves gray-sludge-and-twilight. The cultural level will continue to fall as waves of intellectually illiterate graduates pour from the universities. Schools of engineering and science will mostly resist enstupidation–the definite integral will prove an absolute barrier to affirmative action–but liberal studies, the heart of civilization, will remain dead. Hostility and perhaps mini-wars will erupt between Americans and the Somalis, Moslems, and Guatemalans brought in by the DC-NYC axis, but these will probably be inconclusive. Christianity will be reduced to a low level, though Judaism and Islam will flourish as their adherents have the will to prevent suppression.

The economy will continue its slide while the rich, no longer attached to any particular country, will become stupefyingly rich. (Someone recently paid $172 million for a Modigliani). If things go bad in Manhattan, they can easily move to the south of France.

I do not see how civil unrest (it won’t be civil) can fail to arise. Comfortable people, which white Americans still barely are, do not readily clash with others. But comfort dwindles. The young now often have to live with their parents. People with advanced degrees work as baristas at Starbucks. Universities use “adjunct professors,” academic migrant workers, to lower pay and avoid providing benefits. Many companies hire people as “individual contractors,” likewise to avoid paying benefits. Large numbers who want to work are on food stamps and unemployment.

Not parenthetically, I remember being in Italy at breakfast with a tour group. The restaurant had not ordered enough food for the buffet. These sophisticated and civil people began grabbing, reaching over each other, to get the yogurt and doughnuts. Civilization is a veneer, and not a thick one. Nationally, we are running out of doughnuts.

One thing is clear: America is no longer “one nation under God” (who is, I suppose, an undocumented alien).It is an unhappy land of warring tribes, of peoples who have nothing in common and do not like each other. Blacks, whites, browns, Syrians, Somalis, Southerners, Yankees, Christians, mostly detesting each other. The battle lines are drawn. The question is what kind of battle it will be.

 Updated: A couple additional items:

• "Mystery glitch’s return knocks out BART cars, snarls commute"--SF Gate. Have those responsible for disabling electrical sub-stations moved on to something else?
• "Protesters storm Brazilian capital after bugged phone call goes public which reveals President gave senior government position to her predecessor so he could avoid arrest over corruption"--Daily Mail.