March 9, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Basic Training Basics: The Fire Team Wedge"

iguardcalifornia (4-1/2 min.)

Firearms/Self-Defense:

• "Witnesses in action: The effect of physical exertion on recall and recognition"--Force Science. This is a copy of a paper published in the journal, Psychological Science. Essentially the findings of the authors' testing was that subjects that were involved in physical exertion were less able than a control group to correctly remembering details afterword.
• "The Obsession on Speed"--Gabe Suarez. He writes:

       What all the killers shared was not speed. Oh gasp...was that another cow on his way to the fire?

        What the killers shared was not IDPA-like speed.

        It was a combination of a deliberate decision to kill that man standing there in front of them, and the timing of their action in relation to events.  Often while that other man was still saying "Good morning copper" (as they debated whether to draw or not), the heroes in the story...the Bryces...the Askins, and the Jordans, were already drawing with a resolute mind to kill them.

It reminds of the Wyatt Earp principle that I read about in, of all things, a college Calculus textbook: Earp maintained that the reason that he won all his gunfights is that because, instead of trying to be the fastest, he took that extra moment to aim.

• "Taurus Curve Review"--The Firearms Blog. A very in depth review of the Taurus Curve, and discussion where it might fit into a continuum of  concealed carry--when you need something small and discrete.
• "Quote of the Day: The Argument Against National Concealed Carry Reciprocity"--The Truth About Guns. Liberals have suddenly discovered state rights. While having federal law preempt state law is distasteful to those of us who believe that the federal government should be small and limited (as provided in the Constitution), that boat has long since sailed. Or as Obama liked to say: elections have consequences.
• "Biggest gun bust in Brooklyn history sees terrifying haul of more than 200 weapons seized as police arrest 24 trafficking suspects"--Daily Mail. According to the article, many of those indicted have ties with Bloods gangs in Virginia and Brooklyn. The article is strangely silent on how the smugglers obtained the weapons, though.
• "Five Lessons Learned from the California Chicken Plant Shooting"--Active Response Training. The incident was in November 2004. The perpetrator shot four of his co-workers (killing two) before committing suicide. Greg Ellifritz notes that the perp had numerous felonies, yet was still able to obtain a gun in violation of the law; and targeted his victims, using cover and concealment to get close to them and take the shot.
• "Concealed Carry With An OWB Holster."--Alien Gear Holsters blog. Some tips and thoughts.
• "Fear Management vs. Danger Management"--No-Nonsense Self Defense. An excerpt:

       For example, you know if you shoot someone, there is going to be legal consequences. Nothing is going change that.

       What you might not know is self-defense is a legally defined term that has some pretty strict  guidelines. Guidelines that are easy to cross and turn a situation into fighting (illegal and participatory violence). The higher the level of force (gun or knife) the more strict those guidelines. The important thing is, you can learn about these guidelines and function within them and still be safe! That's actual danger management because it protects you both from the attack and going to prison.

       Fear management will tell you to not bother with that. Learning legal use of force? Prison? Pffffft! Those aren't important. What is important is your fear of being attacked.

       That flies directly in the face of what you know -- and what is demonstrably true. If you're scared about being attacked and you carry a talisman (gun or knife) without any training about when you can legally, ethically and justifiably use it you're setting yourself up for disaster.

• "Shootout: SIG SAUER P320 RX vs. GLOCK 19 MOS With JPoint"--The Truth About Guns. Although the test is really between that of two red-dot sights for handguns, the author also has some comments about using a red-dot generally. He concluded: "At the 10, 15, and 25 yard lines, I didn’t see any improvement with the red dot when it came to accuracy. In fact, up to the 15 yard line, I was more accurate with the iron sights. At 25 yards,  I was just about even. Push it out to the 50, though, and things radically changed."
• "A Ton Of Rifle For Your Money: Thompson/Center .308 Compass – Full Review"--Guns America Blog. Short version: a guaranteed sub-MOA rifle with an MSRP of $399.

Other Stuff:

• "Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals 'Think'"--The Heritage Foundation. Transcript of a presentation made by Evan Sayet discussing why Liberals hate America and are waging a war against rational thought. An excerpt:

       What happens is, they are indoctrinated into what I call a "cult of indiscriminateness." The way the elite does this is by teaching our children, start­ing with the very young, that rational and moral thought is an act of bigotry; that no matter how sin­cerely you may seek to gather the facts, no matter how earnestly you may look at the evidence, no matter how disciplined you may try to be in your reasoning, your conclusion is going to be so tainted by your personal bigotries, by your upbringing, by your religion, by the color of your skin, by the nation of your great-great-great-great-great grandfa­ther's birth; that no matter what your conclusion, it is useless. It is nothing other than the reflection of your bigotries, and the only way to eliminate bigot­ry is to eliminate rational thought.

       There's a brilliant book out there called The Clos­ing of the American Mind by Professor Allan Bloom. Professor Bloom was trying to figure out in the 1980s why his students were suddenly so stupid, and what he came to was the realization, the recog­nition, that they'd been raised to believe that indis­criminateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is the evil of having discriminated. I para­phrase this in my own works: "In order to eliminate discrimination, the Modern Liberal has opted to become utterly indiscriminate."

       I'll give you an example. At the airports, in order not to discriminate, we have to intentionally make ourselves stupid. We have to pretend we don't know things we do know, and we have to pretend that the next person who is likely to blow up an airplane is as much the 87-year-old Swedish great-great-grand­mother as those four 27-year-old imams newly arrived from Syria screaming "Allahu Akbar!" just before they board the plane. In order to eliminate discrimination, the Modern Liberal has opted to become utterly indiscriminate.

       The problem is, of course, that the ability to dis­criminate, to thoughtfully choose the better of the available options--as in "she's a discriminating shopper"--is the essence of rational thought; thus, the whole of Western Europe and today's Democrat­ic Party, dominated as it is by this philosophy, rejects rational thought as a hate crime.

Read the whole thing.

• "Free To Not Be Around You"--Z Man. A fundamental right that has been lost. He explains:

       Freedom of association is not just forbidden. You’re not even allowed to talk about it anymore. Imagine what would happen if someone went on TV and said they don’t want to live next to Koreans or Somalis. They would have their life ruined. It’s why all those principled conservatives we keep hearing about were nowhere to be found when the queers started attacking bakers. Even libertarians sprint from the room when the topic of free association is raised. It’s the result of conceding the moral high ground to the Left.

       It’s why the so-called Right is in a panic over Trump’s immigration talk. If it is acceptable for Americans to say “no” to Muslims on the grounds that we don’t want any more Muslims, then we’re back to discussing the limits, if there are any, to the freedom of association. Put another way, if we don’t need a reason to say “no” to Mohamed, then we don’t need to ask for permission in order to say “no” to diversity. That’s not a fight, or even a discussion, the so-called conservatives want to have with the Left.

       It’s also why the hand-wringing over free speech on campus is a pointless distraction. You cannot have free speech without freedom of association. That’s the obvious lesson from the confines of the academy. Put a bunch of people in close quarters and you have to police what they say and where they go. Otherwise, you have violence. The same is true of all other rights. All natural rights are premised on freedom of people to live apart from those they do not wish to associate. Self-segregation requires little policing.

• "After the Republic" by Angelo M. Codevilla at Claremont. Some further discussion of the impact of anti-discrimination laws:

       Over the past half-century, presidents have ruled not by enforcing laws but increasingly through agencies that write their own rules, interpret them, and punish unaccountably—the administrative state. As for the Supreme Court, the American people have seen it invent rights where there were none—e.g., abortion—while trammeling ones that had been the republic’s spine, such as the free exercise of religion and freedom of speech. The Court taught Americans that the word “public” can mean “private” (Kelo v. City of New London), that “penalty” can mean “tax” (King v. Burwell), and that holding an opinion contrary to its own can only be due to an “irrational animus” (Obergefell v. Hodges).

       What goes by the name “constitutional law” has been eclipsing the U.S. Constitution for a long time. But when the 1964 Civil Rights Act substituted a wholly open-ended mandate to oppose “discrimination” for any and all fundamental rights, it became the little law that ate the Constitution. Now, because the Act pretended that the commerce clause trumps the freedom of persons to associate or not with whomever they wish, and is being taken to mean that it trumps the free exercise of religion as well, bakers and photographers are forced to take part in homosexual weddings. A commission in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reported that even a church may be forced to operate its bathrooms according to gender self-identification because it “could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.” California came very close to mandating that Catholic schools admit homosexual and transgender students or close down. The Justice Department is studying how to prosecute on-line transactions such as vacation home rental site Airbnb, Inc., that fall afoul of its evolving anti-discrimination standards.

       This arbitrary power, whose rabid guard-dog growls and barks: “Racist! Sexist! Homophobic!” has transformed our lives by removing restraints on government. The American Bar Association’s new professional guidelines expose lawyers to penalties for insufficient political correctness. Performing abortions or at least training to perform them may be imposed as a requirement for licensing doctors, nurses, and hospitals that offer services to the general public.

       Addressing what it would take to reestablish the primacy of fundamental rights would have required Republican candidates to reset the Civil Rights movement on sound constitutional roots. Surprised they didn’t do it?

• "Commentary: The H-1B Visa Problem as IEEE-USA Sees It"--IEEE Spectrum. This is an op-ed by past presidents of the IEEE, and they take the same position which I've stated before: the H-1B visa program is being used to replace American engineers, programmers, and other tech workers with cheap foreign labor. There is no STEM crises--it is a sham to justify laying off Americans.
• Third World problems: "Kenyan MP is charged with inciting deadly land invasions after former British Army officer is shot dead on his ranch in the country"--Daily Mail. Incitement of tribal warfare in Kenya. Decolonization was a disaster for Africa. However, China is stepping in to fill the void--and I suspect that they won't be as nice as the British and French.
• "The First Female President®"--The Rational Male. The author asserts that the more correct way to view this past election is as not about Hillary and Trump, but the Feminine Imperative ("Her") vs. conventional masculinity ("Him"). And it was the faith in the inevitable triumph of the "Her" over the "Him," and its failure when the actual results came in, that has so angered the Progressives. He writes:

       All of that changed on Election Day, 2017. All of the preplanned victory lap celebrations, all the feminist triumphal marches scheduled to follow in the wake of the First Female President®, were converted to protests marches, riots, violence and demonstrations against the prospect that He might potentially remove Her rights. All of the pretense of our feminine-centric, feminine-primary social order being a social undercurrent has been, and will be tossed to the wind now. The Empress has no clothes (often literally), and all she wears is a knitted pink-pussy hat; the new uniform of female supremacism. In the span of one election cycle virtually every premise I asserted about the validity of the Feminine Imperative has been confirmed. But moreover, that imperative, so angered by the denial of the First Female President®, is comfortable in its existence being laid bare.

* * *

       The jig is up and the Sisterhood Über Alles has revealed the true nature of the Feminine Imperative. Even the pretense of a desire for ‘equality’ among the sexes is now replaced with a visceral contempt for all things male. More attempts to remove the man from all language is the first initiative in both the military and on campus. No longer does the femosphere feel a need to hide or sweet talk its agenda; the intent isn’t lofty dreams of gender-equality, it is, and always has been Female Supremacism and the complete erasure of anything conventionally male or masculine. If it is male and can be replaced with a female proxy, so be it. If it cannot, its complete destruction is preferred.

• "Maybe Dark Matter Is All Just a Big Mistake"--Cosmos on Nautilus. From the article:

      The latest attempt to apply quantum gravity to these problems comes from Erik Verlinde of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, a physicist who has forged a strong reputation in the field of string theory and quantum gravity. With his new theory, Verlinde claims to explain both dark energy and MOND-like behavior in one go. His work builds on a key insight that has emerged over the past decades, which is that spacetime is not a smooth continuum, as Einstein conceived of it, but has a fine-grained structure. No one really knows the nature of this supposed microstructure, and it might well be impossible for us to see directly, but physicists can study its collective properties such as entropy—a measure of its internal disorder. In the ’70s Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking showed that the entropy of a black hole scales with the exterior surface area of the hole. If this scaling relation is true in general—that is, if the entropy of any given volume of spacetime scales with the surface area of its boundary—then, from it, physicists can derive Einstein’s equations of general relativity.

       For his theory of emergent gravity, Verlinde takes the bold leap that the entropy of spacetime has an additional component that scales with volume. His thinking is that our universe, which approximates a spatiotemporal geometry called de Sitter space, is expanding at an accelerated rate, and so has a cosmological horizon—a distance beyond which we cannot see, because galaxies are receding faster than their light can reach us. Such a horizon is very similar to the boundary of a black hole and, by Bekenstein’s and Hawking’s arguments, implies an entropy. This entropy must be counted in addition to the entropy that physicists already ascribe to spacetime, and—crucially, according to Verlinde—it is not localized at the horizon. “The entropy that we normally associate with the horizon should be thought of as entropy that is distributed throughout the de Sitter space,” he says.

... Sprinkling entropy throughout the volume is tantamount to adding energy to the vacuum of spacetime and raising its temperature. “That energy is dark energy,” says Verlinde. And just like that, the problem of dark energy goes away.

• "PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Inside the 'Lost City of the Monkey God' protected from visitors by a flesh-eating disease"--Daily Mail.