September 20, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Historical Body Mechanics: Walk Medieval!"--Roland Warzecha (~ 7 min.). Before the wide spread use of thick soled shoes and boots, people walked by first placing the ball of the foot down, followed by the heel, instead of the heel-to-toe method we use today.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• "How to Deal With the Firearms and Ammunition That Were Damaged By Flood"--The Firearms Blog. The author cites to a couple sets of instructions published by SAAMI, a video from the American Gunsmithing Institute and an article from Brownells (with links), as well as summarizing the information. Basically, it comes down to disassembling the weapon, cleaning and lubricating it (including using lubricants that are designed to displace moisture) and allowing parts (especially wood) to dry naturally. Ammunition is trickier because different ammunition may have different susceptibility to water damage than others (e.g., rimfire is more easily infiltrated by water than centerfire ammunition; ammunition that has sealant around the primer and the neck of the casing to prevent water intrusion will obviously fare better than ammunition that has not).
• "Shell Shock Technologies NAS3 Shell Cases, 2-Piece Nickel Alloy ~ Video & Review"--Ammo Land. Shell Shock produces a two-piece 9 mm casing that uses an aluminum base and a nickel allow case wall. The product purportedly offers two advantages over brass cartridges: lower weight and longevity (i.e., it can reloaded more times than brass without splitting or cracking). The reviewer, in this case, found both to be true. One of the down-sides, though, is that the cases require special dies from Shell Shock. The author of this review, however, noted that toward the end of his testing, he used regular reloading dies without issue.
• "Real Life Survival: One Family’s Experience with Disaster when the Floods Came"--Imminent Threat Solutions. The author describes his family's experience with floods in Colorado in 2013. The primary take away, however, was the speed of everything: their first warning of flooding was a knock on their door by a fireman warning them to evacuate. By that time, their garage already had about 10 inches of water. They were given 5 to 10 minutes to pack up what they could and leave. I've written about similar experiences with wild-fires: that in some cases you may have only minutes, if even that, to evacuate safely.
• Greg Ellifritz has posted a review of Grant Cunningham's book, Prepping for Life. Cunningham, you may know, is a well respected firearms instructor and author, and particularly known for his advocacy and training for revolver use. Ellifritz thought that the book was well-written and useful. I gather from the review that it takes the "baby-steps" approach to prepping that I and many others advocate: identifying and dealing with more common potential emergencies first before attempting to address those that are less likely.
• "How To Make Homemade Vinegar"--Prepper's Will.  Self-explanatory from the title.
• "September Food Storage & Prep Handout"--Food Storage Organizer. This blogger offers monthly guides that focus on either obtaining or checking off certain preparations and food storage in a way that allows you to slowly build up your preparations, as well as a Family Home Evening (FHM) activity which, for September, is based around earthquake preparations.
• Continuity of Government in action: "Hours After Hurricane Irma, Miami-Dade County Tickets Residents for Code Violations"--Reason. The most common warning ticket apparently was for having a fence around a swimming pool blown down. 

Other Stuff:

• "Police make third arrest in London Tube bombing"--France 24. An unnamed 25-year old man.

• Related: "Potentially deadly bomb ingredients are ‘frequently bought together’ on Amazon"--Channel 4 News. The story reports that if you look up one bomb ingredient on Amazon UK, it will list the other ingredients as part of its "frequently bought together" suggestions. It raises two points: one, there must be a lot of people buying bomb components over Amazon (or perhaps a lot of people that need to bleach their hair and clean off fingernail polish, grease or grime); and, two, the terrorists must be incredibly stupid to buy their ingredients all at once and together off Amazon.

• Spain is proving that "freedom," "self-determination," and "democracy" are just empty catch phrases: "Spanish police seize millions of Catalan referendum ballots"--AFP (via Yahoo News). Of course, by seizing ballots and arresting political leaders supporting the referendum, authorities are just going to drive more Catalans into the separatist camp.

• "FBI wiretapped Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort - reports"--BBC News. When the Obama Administration didn't turn up anything untoward under the first FISA warrant before the election, they went back and got a second one for after the election. You have to understand that this is not just the recording of an occasional telephone call; with the modern surveillance state, this means 24/7 surveillance, remotely turning on a smart phone's microphone and cameras, tracking emails and internet use, and so on.  Daniel Greenfield gives his opinion on why Obama spied on Trump, writing:

        The spying ramped up after Trump’s win when the results could no longer be used to engineer a Hillary victory, but would instead have to be used to cripple and bring down President Trump. Headed out the door, Rice was still unmasking the names of Trump’s people while Obama was making it easier to pass around raw eavesdropped data to other agencies.

        Obama had switched from spying on a political opponent to win an election, to spying on his successor to undo the results of the election. Abuse of power by a sitting government had become subversion of the government by an outgoing administration. Domestic spying on opponents had become a coup.

He goes on to explain:

         Either the investigation gets results. Or its perpetrators are left hanging in the wind. If McMaster is fired, which on purely statistical grounds he probably will be, and a Trump loyalist who wasn’t targeted by the surveillance operation becomes the next National Security Adviser and brings in Trump loyalists, as Flynn tried to do, then it’s over. 

         And the Dems finally get their Watergate. Except the star won’t be Trump, it will be Obama. Rice, Power, Lynch and the rest of the gang will be the new Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell. 

         Once Obama and his allies launched their domestic surveillance operation, they crossed the Rubicon. And there was no way back. They had to destroy President Trump or risk going to jail.

         The more crimes they committed by spying on the opposition, the more urgently they needed to bring down Trump. The consequences of each crime that they had committed spurred them on to commit worse crimes to save themselves from going to jail. It’s the same old story when it comes to criminals.

         Each act of illegal surveillance became more blatant. And when illegal surveillance couldn’t stop Trump’s victory, they had to double down on the illegal surveillance for a coup.

         The more Obama spied on Trump, the more he had to keep doing it. This time it was bound to pay off.

           Obama and his allies had violated the norms so often for their policy goals that they couldn’t afford to be replaced by anyone but one of their own. The more Obama relied on the imperial presidency of executive orders, the less he could afford to be replaced by anyone who would undo them.  The more his staffers lied and broke the law on everything from the government shutdown to the Iran nuke sellout, the more desperately they needed to pull out all the stops to keep Trump out of office. And the more they did it, the more they couldn’t afford not to do it. Abuse of power locks you into the loop familiar to all dictators. You can’t stop riding the tiger. Once you start, you can’t afford to stop.

         If you want to understand why Samantha Power was unmasking names, that’s why. The hysterical obsession with destroying Trump comes from the top down. It’s not just ideology. It’s wealthy and powerful men and women who ran the country and are terrified that their crimes will be exposed.

          It’s why the media increasingly sounds like the propaganda organs of a Communist country. Why there are street riots and why the internet is being censored by Google and Facebook’s “fact checking” allies. 

        It’s not just ideology. It’s raw fear.

         The left is sitting on the biggest crime committed by a sitting president. The only way to cover it up is to destroy his Republican successor. 

        A turning point in history is here. 

         If Obama goes down, the left will go down with him. If his coup succeeds, then America ends.

• It's been 20 years since Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs and Steel was published. In the book, Diamond proposed and, at least to his satisfaction, demonstrated that the reason why certain peoples were more successful (i.e., became dominant and wealthy) was due to natural circumstances such as climate, the availability of resources (e.g., easily domesticated plants and animals), diseases (both resistance to and as carriers of disease), and were able to build upon these advantages to advance far beyond other groups. However, to understand Diamond's thesis and reasoning, it is not only necessary to look at what Diamond considered, but what he ignored out-of-hand. And you don't have to dig for it. In his prologue, at pages 18-20, Diamond specifically indicates that he rejects any notion that one group of people has a genetic or biological advantage over another group of people, especially intelligence or IQ. It is not even that Diamond considers the possibility; instead, to Diamond, to even suggest such an explanation was to be beyond the pale. (In fact, he goes to the opposite extreme, arguing that natives of Papua New Guinea are more intelligent than the average American or European). He also rejects Arnold J. Toynbee's theory that climatic differences impacted people differently, with harsh climates requiring greater creativity and intelligence in order for people to survive. There is a lot to criticize in Diamond's theory; and, to me, the two biggest weaknesses in his theory is that it cannot explain how Britain and Japan became the technological and economic powerhouses they did, while New Guinea did not, when the former two suffered from at least as much as a disadvantage as the latter in terms of natural resources, climate, and domestic resources.

        In any event, there are a couple of articles that look at how well (or poorly) Diamond's hypothesis has held up:

• "20 Years of Guns, Germs, and Steel"--Ricochet. The author writes:

It is [my] academic and casual interest in history that has led me to the conclusion that Diamond’s thesis is deeply flawed, and flawed not because he presents facts which are incorrect, (although some are certainly debatable) but because he allows his personal views and attachments to the native cultures that he has personally studied and interacted with to color his judgment. It’s arguable that Diamond is also something of a cultural relativist, given how far he goes out of his way to point out that even though the vast majority of scientific, mathematical, and societal achievements have come from Eurasian civilization, this has nothing to do with the inherent intelligence or moral character of the native populations that he has come across. Instead, he lays credit for the outcome of history — European hegemony over the known world such as what had emerged by the 18th century — at the feet of what I’ll call “geographic determinism.”

He also focuses on China--a civilization that had every advantage Diamond attributes to Europe, but in spades, yet nevertheless stagnated. 

• "Guns, Germs, and Steel revisited"--West Hunt. The author of this piece doesn't dismiss the general idea that climate or other factors may have given a leg up to certain civilizations. What he attacks are Diamond's complete dismissal of the science of psychometrics, and the numerous factual and logical errors. He concludes:

We could use more serious work on macrohistory and the rise of civilization: it’s an interesting and important subject. In particular I’d like to see a really smart and detailed comparison of the two totally independent births of civilization in the Old and New Worlds. But this book isn’t serious. The thesis is a joke, and most of the supporting arguments are forced ( i.e. wrong). Perhaps the most important thing we can learn from Guns, Germs, and Steel is that most people are suckers, eager to sign on to ridiculous theories as long as they have the right political implications.