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Saturday, February 25, 2017

February 25, 2017--A Quick Run Around the Web

"The Buffer - Theory and when to Use What Buffer"
Chris Bartocci (35 min.)

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
  • "CCW Holder Wrongly Convicted in 5 Minutes, for Defending His Life from BLM Thugs"--Ammo Land. Yesterday, I commented on an article in which the author suggested that a person should always call the police if they have to draw their firearm in self-defense even if they don't actually fire the weapon. I questioned this because of the risk of being prosecuted for brandishing or aggravated assault. After publishing my post, I came across the Ammo Land article, which seems to support my concern. From the article:
        Mike [Strickland] is an independent journalist/videographer who was covering a progressive anarchist “demonstration” in Portland, Oregon when he became surrounded by a mob of radical, anarchists. You know the types, the one in masks that throw bottles and break things, otherwise known as peaceful Democrat “protestors” supported by the former president “What’s His Face.”
           As the mob continued to surround and outflank him, they chanted “get him” and other nasty garbage. Mike did what any expert would teach any student to do; he retreated as best he could before being surrounded and overwhelmed by the ever growing mob. Realizing he was now nearly surrounded and in fear for his life, Mike drew his lawfully concealed firearm and used it to keep the crowd at bay. He never fired a shot, and in fact, his finger never touched the trigger.
             Law enforcement finally arrived, and after some investigation, Mike was charged (wrongly in my opinion) with misdemeanor menacing.
      According to the article, the charges were later expanded to include 10 counts of unlawful use of a weapon, 10 counts of menacing and one count of disorderly conduct. Strickland was found guilty of all 21 counts and "now faces fifty years in an Oregon penitentiary for drawing his lawfully concealed weapons to defend himself from an advancing mob of progressive, anarchist, Obama/Clinton Democrats while trying to retreat to safety."
      • "Jim Corbett's Rigby Returns to India"--Outdoor Life. If you like to read accounts by big game hunters of a century ago, you've probably come across books by Corbett of his adventures hunting down man-eating tigers in India. Amazingly, he used a relatively light weight caliber: .275 Rigby (aka 7×57mm Mauser). He also generally hunted with no assistance other than a dog. In any event, the article gives a bit of background on Corbett, if you don't know about him.
      • "3 First Aid Tools Every Shooter Should Have In Their Range Bag"--The Truth About Guns. The author recommends (1) a triangle bandage, (2) a pressure dressing, and (3) a Combat Application Tourniquet. As some of the commentators suggest, you might also want some quick clot and/or a chest seal.
      • "Loose AR Receivers? JP Enterprises Fixed Them with MicroFit Pins"--The Firearms Blog. The pins are manufactured at standard size, 0.001 inch oversized, and 0.001 undersized.
      • "Herniated Disc – Prepper Treatment"--A Survival Plan. Ah, back injuries. Herniated disks can be debilitating when the disk bulge impinges on the nerves or spinal cord. The author discusses what a herniated disk is, and some home remedies to help with recovery. The best treatment is time--most herniations will heal by itself with rest--but the healing time can be 12 to 18 months.
      • "Sailboats, survival, and SHTF"--Graywolf Survival. While the author thinks it a great idea, it appears to me to be a very high maintenance proposition. You will have to be a jack-of-all-trades to maintain the boat and its accouterments. If you are interested further in this topic, here are a few articles I've found that discuss sailboats in the context of survivalism or bugging out:
      Of course, there are a plethora of resources, websites, and magazines on sailing, but I thought a few articles about living on a sailboat might be of interest:
      And, I'm sure, there are plenty of blogs by people living on boats.
      • "How To Prep Pepper Seedlings"--Go Garden Club. Time to be thinking about planting.
      • "Best Canned Meat For Your Deep Pantry Food Storage"--Modern Survival Blog. "The RDA (Recommended Daily Allowances) for daily intake of protein is 56 grams for men and 46 grams for women." The author provides recommendations on several commercially canned meats, but keep in mind that you can also can your own meats, or pre-made meals such as stew or chilli which will also provide animal protein.

      Other Stuff:
              Last week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that members of the intelligence community — part of the deep state, the unseen government within the government that does not change with elections — now have acquired so much data on everyone in America that they can selectively reveal it to reward their friends and harm their foes. Their principal foe today is the president of the United States.
                 Liberty is rarely lost overnight. The wall of tyranny often begins with benign building blocks of safety — each one lying on top of a predecessor — eventually collectively constituting an impediment to the exercise of free choices by free people, often not even recognized until it is too late.
          * * *
                The surveillance state regime today permits America's 60,000 military and civilian domestic spies to access in real time all the landline and mobile telephone calls and all the desktop and mobile device keystrokes and all the digital data created and used by anyone in the United States. The targets today are not just ordinary Americans; they are justices on the Supreme Court, military brass in the Pentagon, agents in the FBI, local police in cities and towns, and the man in the Oval Office.
          Read the whole thing. I would note that secrets--and secret agencies--are antithetical to a government by the people. 
                   ... Overgrazing led to soil erosion. A lack of wood—Greenland has very few trees, mostly scrubby birch and willow in the southernmost fjords—prevented them from building new ships or repairing old ones. But the greatest challenge—and the coup de grâce—came when the climate began to cool, triggered by an event on the far side of the world.
                     In 1257, a volcano on the Indonesian island of Lombok erupted. Geologists rank it as the most powerful eruption of the last 7,000 years. Climate scientists have found its ashy signature in ice cores drilled in Antarctica and in Greenland’s vast ice sheet, which covers some 80 percent of the country. Sulfur ejected from the volcano into the stratosphere reflected solar energy back into space, cooling Earth’s climate. “It had a global impact,” McGovern says. “Europeans had a long period of famine”—like Scotland’s infamous “seven ill years” in the 1690s, but worse. “The onset was somewhere just after 1300 and continued into the 1320s, 1340s. It was pretty grim. A lot of people starving to death.”
                       Amid that calamity, so the story goes, Greenland’s Vikings—numbering 5,000 at their peak—never gave up their old ways. They failed to learn from the Inuit, who arrived in northern Greenland a century or two after the Vikings landed in the south. They kept their livestock, and when their animals starved, so did they. The more flexible Inuit, with a culture focused on hunting marine mammals, thrived.
                However, archaeologists now believe that the story is more complex. The Norse established two primary settlements on the island, feeding themselves by annual seal hunts and produce that they produced on their small farms. But the real reason they were in Greenland, it is now believed, was to hunt walrus for their ivory tusks. 
                         Many ivory artifacts from the Middle Ages, whether religious or secular, were carved from walrus tusks, and the Vikings, with their ships and far-flung trading networks, monopolized the commodity in Northern Europe. After hunting walruses to extinction in Iceland, the Norse must have sought them out in Greenland. They found large herds in Disko Bay, about 600 miles north of the Eastern Settlement and 300 miles north of the Western Settlement. ...
                    * * *
                           Then, in the 13th century, after three centuries, their world changed profoundly. First, the climate cooled because of the volcanic eruption in Indonesia. Sea ice increased, and so did ocean storms—ice cores from that period contain more salt from oceanic winds that blew over the ice sheet. Second, the market for walrus ivory collapsed, partly because Portugal and other countries started to open trade routes into sub-Saharan Africa, which brought elephant ivory to the European market. “The fashion for ivory began to wane,” says Dugmore, “and there was also the competition with elephant ivory, which was much better quality.” And finally, the Black Death devastated Europe. There is no evidence that the plague ever reached Greenland, but half the population of Norway—which was Greenland’s lifeline to the civilized world—perished.
                             The Norse probably could have survived any one of those calamities separately. After all, they remained in Greenland for at least a century after the climate changed, so the onset of colder conditions alone wasn’t enough to undo them. Moreover, they were still building new churches—like the one at Hvalsey—in the 14th century. But all three blows must have left them reeling. With nothing to exchange for European goods—and with fewer Europeans left—their way of life would have been impossible to maintain. The Greenland Vikings were essentially victims of globalization and a pandemic.
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