February 27, 2017--A Quick Run Around the Web

"How to Reload a Semi-Automatic Pistol"

Lucky Gunner Ammo

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• "When Nuthin’ Works: Touted For Their Reliability, Even The Finest Double-Action Revolvers Can Have Problems"--Massad Ayoob at Guns Magazine. Four examples from a recent shooting match where the competitors had something go wrong with their revolver: a sight suffering a problem; a weak hammer spring and hard primers resulted in "duds"; dirt under the ejection star jamming up the cylinder; a problem with the cylinder bolt that resulted in the cylinder not locking up.
• "Chicago Gangs Turn To Rifles For More Firepower"--Law Officer. From the article:

       The Chicago Police Department report at least 33 gang related shootings in Back of the Yards and Brighton Park over the past nine months have been tied to semi-automatic rifles as several gangs boost their firepower. At least 46 people have been shot in the attacks, 13 fatally.

       Police say this is the only area of the city where rifles styled after AR-15s and AK-47s are regularly used, a menacing new development in the gang fights.

       It’s unclear how many of the high-powered rifles are on the street, but police suspect they are being passed around by members of four Hispanic gangs in the Deering police district, which covers parts of the South and Southwest sides.

       Police have seized at least three rifles and have recovered rifle casings at dozens of crime scenes. There is also surveillance video showing rifles being used, according to investigators.

• "Modern Personal Defense Weapon Calibers 009: The .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire"--The Firearms Blog. Nathaniel F. looks at the ballistics of the .22 Mag. compared to other calibers tendered for use in personal defense weapons.
• "Picking A Home Defense Handgun Vs. Picking A Concealed Carry Gun."--Alien Gear Holster Blog. When selecting a handgun (or any weapon, for that matter), there are certain characteristics or factors that we must compare and assign different weights. For instance, you would assign a higher weight to size and weight for a concealed weapon versus one that you intended as a "nightstand" pistol. This article discusses some of the different weighting of factors.
• "Woodcarving with Children: A Safe Adventure"--Morakniv (h/t The Truth About Knives). Recommended knives (including a progression from beginner to more advanced), and guidelines on introducing the child to the knife and carving.
• "Metrics vs Mediocrity"--Shooting Performance. The author argues that absent some way to measure your abilities and quantify them, you are going to be handicapped in developing you skills. One example given is using a shot timer.
• "Best Ways For Hunters To Attract Deer"--The Weapon Blog. This comes too late (or too early), but there is always next season.
• "AimSportsInc Dishes Out HK Handguards in M-LOK & KEYMOD"--The Firearms Blog. The handguards are for rifle length and carbine length HK91s. So, if you have an HK91 or CETME C you are thinking of upgrading....
• "Fruit Walls: Urban Farming in the 1600s"--Low-Tech Magazine. The author explains:

       From the sixteenth to the twentieth century, urban farmers grew Mediterranean fruits and vegetables as far north as England and the Netherlands, using only renewable energy.

       These crops were grown surrounded by massive "fruit walls", which stored the heat from the sun and released it at night, creating a microclimate that could increase the temperature by more than 10°C (18°F). Later, greenhouses built against the fruit walls further improved yields from solar energy alone.

       It was only at the very end of the nineteenth century that the greenhouse turned into a fully glazed and artificially heated building where heat is lost almost instantaneously -- the complete opposite of the technology it evolved from.

Other Stuff:

• "Want to Listen to Spy Broadcasts? Here’s How--The strange transmissions of shortwave numbers stations"--War Is Boring. "Numbers stations" is a term describing stations that broadcast static, nonsense, or what have you, then will periodically broadcast a set of numbers (probably for use with a one-time pad key) or otherwise encrypted transmissions. A couple more related links:

• "Numbers Stations"--DXing.com. 

• "How to Listen to Real Spy Broadcasts Right Now"--Life Hacker.

• Throwing down the gauntlet: "Jorge Ramos: America Is ‘Our Country, Not Theirs’—‘And We Are Not Going to Leave’"--Breitbart. From the article:

       Univision senior anchor Jorge Ramos declared on Friday that the United States belongs to Latino migrants, emphatically stating to a Spanish-speaking audience that “it is our country, not theirs.”

       Ramos took an unusual tack, pivoting from talk of diversity and togetherness into boasts of conquest. Mass immigration, particularly illegal immigration, was a fait accompli. There is nothing the U.S. can do about it, and they must accept that America is “not their” country and that illegal aliens, particularly Latinos, “are not going to leave,” he said.

Just another example of what happens when you let the camel put its nose into the tent.

• I have to wonder if this is a "trolling" site: "It’s Time for White People to Pay for Privilege: The Equality Tax"--We Splain. A call for whites to pay a special income tax to be distributed to "people of color" (which is so much better a term than "colored people") in order to "level the economic playing field." The author suggests a 5% tax on income for single white males, 4.5% for single white women, and 4% for white married couples. 
• "SKYNET SMILES: Supersmart Robots Will Outnumber Humans Within 30 Years, Says SoftBank CEO"--Instapundit. Considering the prospect of robots replacing much of the workforce, Stephen Green muses: 

       The Saudis already outsource much of their labor to millions of foreign guest-workers from India, Pakistan, and around the Arab world. Their numbers are huge — it’s estimated that about 31% of the Saudi population of 27 million is made up of expatriates. The wages those workers repatriate help keep their home economies afloat. If Son is correct, that cashflow is about to be diverted away from the Third World, and towards Japan, China, the U.S., and other makers of automated systems.

       Those workers getting the boot and that money drying up could create the next big disruptive wave to come out of the Middle East and South Asia.

• "Can critical thinking actually be taught?"--Isegoria. "You can teach students maxims about how they ought to think, but without background knowledge and practice, they probably will not be able to implement the advice they memorize. Just as it makes no sense to try to teach factual content without giving students opportunities to practice using it, it also makes no sense to try to teach critical thinking devoid of factual content."
• "A god we must obey."--Dalrock. A discussion of why "[t]he message is that women become more moral by casting off obligation and following their own desires," is morally wrong using scripture and satire, and analyzing the underlying lie.
• "Leaning in"--Alpha Game. Citing a study showing that a large percentage of mid-level women have affairs with senior executives to get promotions, Vox Day sardonically concludes that "[t]his explains why technology executives are so determined to get more women in tech."
• "Silver Blaze"--West Hunter. A discussion of a then-recently released paper on the ancestory of modern Europeans. From the article:

They conclude that in most parts of Europe, it looks as if modern populations inherited the three  EEF/WHG/ANE groups ( Levantine farmers, West Hunters and Sibermen) via only two proximate ancestral populations.  Europe at the time was almost entirely occupied by Sardinian-like farmers – then another population moved in, one that had about 3 times as much West Hunter as Sibermen.  

The author goes on to explain:

       This means that the WHG fraction you see came with along the ANE guys – it is not a comeback by the descendants of the original hunter-gatherers of central and Western Europe, who were somewhere between much diminished and extinct,  but an invasion (from farther east, probably) by a group that is somewhat related to those original hunter-gatherers and also has a fair amount of ancestry from Sibermen- a population that also contributed to Amerindians.  You could see hints of this in the haplotypes and uniparental lineages – I talked about it earlier.

       This also means that the change in ancestry around 3000 BC was not small – it’s much bigger than the ANE fraction.  The suddenly-appearing component accounts for half or more of the ancestry of all the populations of northern Europe, all the way from Belorussia to Scotland.  That population might also have had some EEF, in which case the population replacement factor would be even bigger.

       The WHG + ANE fraction is about half in France, lower than that in the South of France.   It’s much lower in southern Europe. The Albanians, Ashkenazi Jews, Greeks, Maltese and Sicilians have essentially no WHG ancestry, while a decent fit is possible for the Basque, French_South, Bergamo, Pais-Vasco, and Sardinians using no Siberian component.    Using another estimation approach you get a nonzero but lower Siberian component in Basques, and almost none in Sardinians.

       This last wave can only have come from a region that had both WHG-like and ANE-like ancestry. That rules out the Middle East: they don’t have WHG.  You see quite a lot of ANE in the northeast Caucasus and the northern Near East – the high is in Chechens and Lezgin.

       All this is pointing to a big wave of genetic change around 3000 BC,  a wave that did not originate in the Near East (including Anatolia). Perhaps the strongest hint is what they don’t say in this paper.  Although they mentioned such possibilities in an earlier related paper, they make no mention of the Indo-Europeans.  They don’t even use the word language anywhere in the supplement.  All this while they’re clearly working out the origin and scope of the Indo-European invasion!