October 19, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"How to wrap puttees, with crossing turns."--James Heath (~ 4 min.)

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• "Gun Disarmament Training for People Who Know Nothing About Guns"--The Truth About Guns. From the article:

        Firing a gun isn’t as easy as most people think; especially a handgun. Inexperienced/untrained shooters tend to “jerk” the trigger in anticipation of the bang. They pull the gun down and to the side. They tend to shoot low left if they’re right-handed, low right if they are left-handed.

        Rapid muzzle redirection is the core of any close quarters combat firearms defense. An inch in a single direction can be the difference between life and death. If you redirect the firearm in the direction that the shooter’s likely to jerk the trigger, there’s a greater chance they’ll miss you if they fire. As they say, go with the flow.

Also note that the author discusses grabbing a semi-auto pistol. I would (again) note that Matthew Schafer did some tests with revolvers and found that grabbing a revolver is not a good idea.

• "Seven Top-Tier Hunting Bullets for the .243 Win."--American Hunter. A review of different bullets for different applications: from light-weight bullets only intended for varmint, to medium "do-all" bullets, to heavier bullets intended for medium-sized game. One on particular:

Berger 95-grain Classic Hunter

Containing a hybrid nose design and long, Berger VLD-style boattail, the match-grade 95-grain Classic Hunter has the best BC of any .24-caliber bullet that’ll work within SAAMI parameters for overall length (and thus fit into standard rifle magazines). Less sensitive to seating depth too, the Classic Hunter nonetheless shares the terminal performance of the company’s VLD Hunter in the same weight; that is, the bullet will penetrate several inches before shedding upward of 85 percent of its weight. Washed off material serves to enhance damage to vital organs. Recovery distances are generally short. Like the Sierra 85-grain BTHP GameKing, this particular variant is currently available only as a component. Its sibling, the 95-grain VLD Hunting, is loaded by HSM.

• "Thrym Releases Updated Switchback"--This device is designed to allow you to manipulate a flashlight for searching a house, but then bring it up to use with your weapon (i.e., to get a two handed grip on the weapon) if you should encounter a hostile intruder. You will have to look at it to understand how it works. The device also incorporates a clip for pocket carry or with PALS webbing.
• "Why residents in some American states may soon need a passport for domestic air travel"--Daily Mail. The gist of the article is that the federal Real ID Act sets certain standards for issuance of a driver's license or state identification card in order for it to be used for air travel, but a fairly large number of states have not met the requirements. Of course, if you are an illegal alien, none of this applies to you: a "Notice to Appear" letter will let you fly domestically.
• "The Controllers: 'We Want Monitoring Of Ammunition Stockpiling'"--The Captain's Journal. Hugh Hewitt is calling for increased monitoring of people that purchase large quantities (amount not defined) of ammunition, and abolition of internet sales of ammunition.
• I sense waning support for new gun control measures: "Schumer: Keep gun votes out of budget debate"--The Hill. From the article:

       Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) said on Wednesday that he doesn’t want to get bogged down in a debate over gun control, which could come back to bite Democrats running for reelection, when the Senate debates the budget this week.

        Instead, the Democratic leader wants to limit the focus to President Trump’s tax plan and the Republican proposal to cut the growth of Medicare, issues that Democratic strategists think will play better with voters in swing states next year.

       “I would like and I am urging my caucus to limit it to four issues,” Schumer told reporters.

• "Advice To The Modern Gun Student"--Gabe Suarez. He has ten points to consider and live by when it comes to defensive shooting, but point number two bears repeating: "Understand this...believe it...internalize it. It is not about the game of shooting...it is not about the target...it is not about the stage or about the score, or about the rules. It is about killing. And it is about using the pistol to kill your threat with." 
• "Study Finds Mass Killings Not On The Rise Over Past Decade"--CBS Chicago. From the article:

        Contrary to what you might think, mass murders are not on the rise, according to computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson.


        Jacobson said there were 323 such killings – in which four or more people are killed in one incident – between January 2006 and October 2016. The mass killings appeared to be evenly distributed over that time, meaning their rate remained stable over the past decade, and did not spike during any particular season or year.


        “The data doesn’t lie. The rate of these events just is not increasing as the perception is given in the media. This is just what it is,” he said.


         The professor used a decade’s worth of data from USA Today that was cross-checked by the FBI. He said his analysis also found public shooting sprees like the Las Vegas massacre are not the most common type of mass killing.

Also:

        Jacobson said the research, which is being published in the journal Violence and Victims, shows you can’t predict a mass murder based on information from an earlier one.


        He said, because they’re so unpredictable, the best way to prepare for something like that is not to station police officers in all public places, but to train them really well in rapid response.

Other Stuff:

• Why am I not surprised: "ICE Detainer Issued for Suspected Wine Country Arsonist in Sonoma Jail"--Breitbart. The article reports: "The U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) issued a detainer request on the Sonoma County Jail for Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, who was arrested Sunday on suspicion of arson in Wine Country fires that have killed at least 40 residents."
• Some stories on the Clinton-Russian bribery scandal involving Uranium One:

• "Bombshell Revelations About Russia and Obama's Department of Justice"--Powerline.

• "What Did Mueller Know? New Documents Show Clinton-Russia Scandal Dwarfs Anything on Trump’s Side"--PJ Media. 

• "Uranium One Means Mueller Must Recuse Himself from Russia Probe"--PJ Media. 

• "Gregg Jarrett: The Clinton cover-up, brought to you by the same guys who are investigating Trump"--Fox News.

• "How Stalin Hid Ukraine's Famine From the World"--The Atlantic. Walter Duranty and The New York Times played a particularly important role, acting as Stalin's Goebbels to the rest of the world.
• Moderation in all things: "Too Much Exercise May Lead To Heart Problems, If You're A White Man"--Tech Times. I have known a disproportionate number of dedicated runners that have had heart attacks--this may explain why:

        The researchers studied coronary artery calcification, or CAC, of more than 3,000 white and black men with ages of 18 years old to 30 years old from Birmingham, Alabama; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Oakland, California over a period of 25 years. CAC is the measurement of calcium and plaque in the arteries of the heart, and the detection of its presence through methods such as a simple CT scan is a warning that the person is at risk of developing a heart disease.

         The men were grouped according to how many minutes they worked out weekly. The first group did not meet the recommended time of 150 minutes, the second group reached that number, and the third group worked out excessively, at 450 minutes per week.

        "We expected to see that higher levels of physical activity over time would be associated with lower levels of CAC," said assistant professor Deepika Laddu from the Applied Health Sciences department of UIC.

        The results, however, were surprising. The researchers discovered that the third group of men, those who exercised too much, were 27 percent more likely to suffer from CAC by the time they reached 43 years old to 55 years old compared to the people in the first group. Also surprising is the fact that the white men who work out too much are 86 percent more like to see CAC compared to black men.

        It was suggested that the intense dedication to exercise resulted in stress on the arteries, leading to the higher risk of CAC.

• You may have noticed last week a large number of news outlets trumpeting that the Vikings were actually Muslim. Well, it was fake news. "Viking textile which suggested Nordic tribes were influenced by Islam did NOT feature the word 'Allah', claims expert"--Daily Mail. From the article:

       Engraved burial costumes from Viking boat graves that supposedly provided evidence of contact between Nordic tribes and ancient Islam contain 'no Arabic at all', according to an expert who has slammed the initial research.

        The Viking textile found in 9th and 10th century graves did not include the word 'Allah' as was widely reported, according to a professor of Medieval Islamic art and archaeology.

         Dr Stephennie Mulder of the University of Texas in Austin claimed the error stems from a 'serious problem of dating', claiming Kufic script did not occur until 500 years after the Vikings.

I noticed that this story did not get the expansive air time as had the initial, false, report.

• "Superstitious parents of four girls 'KILL their neighbour's daughter and chop off her arm, leg and ear because they hoped sacrifice would give them a son'"--Daily Mail. This occurred in India. The United States is the third most popular destination for Indian migrants worldwide.
• "Google DeepMind: AI becomes more alien"--BBC News. When DeepMind was first taught to play Go, the AI learned from studying the games of human players. This time, they had DeepMind start from scratch using only the rules. "Within 72 hours it was good enough to beat the original program by 100 games to zero."

• Related: "What could possibly go wrong? Google's machine learning AI has been able to replicate itself for the first time"--Daily Mail. The article reports:

        Google's machine learning artificial intelligence software has learned to replicate itself for the first time.

         The firm first revealed its AutoML project in May - an AI designed to help the firm create other AIs.

         Now, AutoML has outdone human engineers by building machine-learning software that's more efficient and powerful than the top human-designed systems.

         The achievement marks the next big step for the AI industry, in which development is automated as the software becomes too complex for humans to understand.

          The breakthrough could one day lead to machines that can learn without human input.

• Yet we are told that Mexico posses no danger of becoming a failed state: "Narco Production and Violence Displaces Thousands in Sinaloa's Sierra"--Borderland Beat. The article indicates that villagers have fled from many towns in the region, and local mines have stopped or reduced production.

• Related: "New fighting and narco blockages in Reynosa"--Borderland Beat. Bandits are using stolen buses and commercial vehicles, as well as road spikes, to block highways and rob the drivers and passengers of other vehicles using what the article describes as "extreme violence."  

• "Diver finds body in barrel floating in San Diego Bay"--Fox News. 
• "This Company’s Robots Are Making Everything—and Reshaping the World"--Bloomberg. Interesting quote: "... Fanuc might just be the single most important manufacturing company in the world right now, because everything Fanuc does is designed to make it part of what every other manufacturing company is doing." And an ominous note for future Chinese stability. The article mentions the large number of factories in China that are automating or moving to foreign shores and adds:

         This trend was confirmed by Hong Tao, director of operations at the Beijing office of Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations Inc. Hong says that when he joined the China wing of the world’s oldest international detective agency in 2001, the company mostly concerned itself with busting counterfeiters, investigating fraud and embezzlement, and providing security for foreign executives, with the odd kidnapping case mixed in. Then, around 2012, U.S. companies that once wanted his help opening factories began asking for help closing them down.

         "When one of our clients closes a factory in China, it’s my job to prevent any violence or unrest by negotiating a severance package that the workers and the company can both live with,” Hong says over tea at Pinkerton’s Beijing office. This has become a growth industry for Pinkerton, as wages continue to rise and foreign manufacturers continue to flee. About one-third of the dozens of companies Hong has helped move their factories to Thailand or Vietnam, where labor is cheaper. “The rest of them,” he says, “are replacing Chinese peasants with Japanese robots.”

• Or a bell shape: "Pilot Wave theory suggests Trumpet shaped Emdrive would have more thrust"--Next Big Future. From the article:

         A radio frequency (RF) resonant cavity thruster, EmDrive, is a controversial proposed type of propellentless electromagnetic thruster with a microwave cavity, designed to produce thrust from an electromagnetic field inside the cavity.

         Researchers José Croca and Paulo Castro from the Centre for Philosophy of Sciences of the University of Lisbon in Portugal suggest that not only could pilot wave theory explain the mysterious behavior of the EM drive, it could help to make it even more powerful.

      Applying a pilot wave theory to NASA’s EM drive frustum [or cone] could explain its thrust without involving any external action applied to the system, as Newton’s third law would require.

       Currently, the majority of physicists subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which states that particles do not have defined locations until they are observed.

       Pilot wave theory, on the other hand, suggests that particles do have precise positions at all times, but in order for this to be the case, the world must also be strange in other ways – which is why many physicists have dismissed the idea.

       Pilot wave theory says that an object radiates a wave field, and it is then pulled or attracted to regions of that field that have higher intensity or energy density. In that way, the wave field is actually ‘piloting’ the object, hence the name.

        Through modelling, the team showed that a sufficiently strong and asymmetrical electromagnetic field could act as a pilot wave. And that’s exactly what the EM drive generates.

        Because the cone, or frustum, of the EM drive is asymmetrical, it would also generate an asymmetrical wave field. As a result, the walls of the EM drive would move towards the areas of higher intensity, creating thrust.

        While that might sound pretty out there, this was also actually a possible solution put forward by the NASA Eagleworks researchers in their seminal paper last year where they first reported the thrust generated by their device:

        “[The] supporting physics model used to derive a force based on operating conditions in the test article can be categorized as a nonlocal hidden-variable theory, or pilot-wave theory for short.”

         If a pilot wave does explain the thrust behind the device, then it could also lead to a way to make the propulsion system even more powerful in future, and it’s as simple as tweaking the shape.

        “We have seen that the effect could be enhanced using a different shape for the frustum,” said Castro. “In fact a trumpet exponential form is expected to increase the thrust.”

This is increasingly sounding like the Nazi bell.