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

"The Truth About Soy Boys"--Paul Joseph Watson (8 min.)

Watson notes a link between effeminate liberal "men" and consumption of soy products. There is a scientific reason for this--soy products contain estrogen.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• Better late than never: This past weekend's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training. Rory Miller gives his thoughts on the "sheepdog" analogy (similar to what I and others have said, it is a deeply flawed analogy); an analysis of hit location and fatality rate of all criminal gunshot wounds in Chicago in 2017 (not surprisingly, head shots do particularly well); "Better Rude Than Dead"; and a lot more.
• An interesting new product--the Glock E-Trainer--a simple product that easily installs on your Glock pistol to allow trigger manipulation (without having to constantly rack the slide) and practice dry fire, drawing and holstering, etc. Reviews from Ammo Land and The Firearms Blog. $25.
• Guns save money as well as lives: "NBC: 'Gun Violence' Costs $2.8 Billion Per Year (As Opposed to $1 Trillion Saved by DGUs)"--The Truth About Guns. 
• Very zen: "Bicycle Maintenance"--Blue Collar Prepping. Recommended tools and tips as to common maintenance issues. The suggested tools are: bike pump; pressure gauge; tire patch kit; tire slime; tire tool; pliers; Allen wrench set; chalk or grease pen; Crescent (adjustable) wrench; teflon lube; screwdriver; and quality duct tape. One thing to do is to test your equipment to make sure it works on your bike. I remember an incident where I starting out on a ride, and about a mile into my trip, noticed that my rear tire was soft. I had a small pump in a tool kit and stopped to use it. The problem I had is that the with the small size of the pump, I could not get the leverage to pump the tire up to the 80+ pounds required. 

• Related: "Bicycle Trailers and Cargo"--Blue Collar Prepping. Different ways to carry and secure cargo to your bike: panniers, cargo racks, baskets, and different types of trailers. 

• "Speed Strips vs. Speedloaders – Keeping Your Revolver In The Fight"--Ammo Land. "The benefit of Speed Strips is their profile, which is flat much like a semi-auto’s magazine. Easy and discreet to carry your spare ammunition in your pocket or a pouch on the belt."  Speedloaders are faster, but as the author points out, "[t]he one downside to speedloaders ... is that the body sometimes becomes wedged against the grip, preventing a precise release of the rounds." The author also notes some (a very few types) use moon-clips.
• "Primary Arms’ Newest Micro Dot: 50K Hours, Only $150!"--Guns America. The MD-RB-AD may not be as tough as an Aim Point, it is a lot less expensive and provides (or is advertised as providing) comparable battery life--meaning that you could leave it on all the time for instant use. 
• Gun control in action: "Elderly British Man Jailed for Collection of over 100 Illegal Firearms"--The Firearms Blog. Per the article, "[t]he impressive cache of weapons included everything from 19th century pocket revolvers to an Ingram M10 submachine gun, a Sten gun, various patterns of AK and even an Armalite AR-10." So much for Britain's vaunted gun control laws: even a 74 year old was able to get around them. 
• "Best Handheld Two-Way Radios of 2017 – Buying Guide and Reviews"--Two Way Radio Talk. The author has a detailed article on modern two-way radios ("walkie talkies") generally (including describing features) as well as a review of what he considers the top picks. A couple of notable points: "The Motorola MR350R radios have a 35-mile range" and "Retevis two-way radios have a reputation for quality. Among the company’s most highly rated walkie talkies is the H-777 set. These radios each come with their own earpiece."
• "Vista Outdoor on .22 Ammo: Supply up, Demand Down, Price Down"--Ammo Land. The new .22 rimfire plant in Lewiston, Idaho, is on line. Vista Outdoors owns the CCI and Federal rimfire brands, and its new .22 rimfire manufacturing plant has come online in Lewiston, Idaho, allowing an increase in production of 20% for each brand. However, the higher supply combined with flattening demand means that prices are falling. I've started to notice that prices are beginning to drop toward pre-.22-drought prices: I picked up a box of Federal's .22 Auto Match for $14 at Walmart, which is about $10 less per box than I have been paying even a couple of months ago, and about what it was before the drought. 

Other Stuff:

• Karma's a b*tch--after reading about Sweden's role in bringing down Rhodesia and South Africa, it is hard to have much sympathy now that the savages are about to take over in Sweden: "Crime Wave Engulfs Sweden as Fraud, Sexual Offenses Reach Record"--Bloomberg. From the record:

A survey by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention showed that 15.6 percent of people suffered one or more offences against the person (defined in the survey as assault, threats, sexual offences, robbery, fraud or harassment) last year. That’s up from 13.3 percent in 2015 and the highest number recorded since the annual Swedish Crime Survey started in 2006.

• Unexpectedly: "Sweden Under Pressure to Adopt Islamic National Flag"--Red Ice TV. The article discusses a petition calling on Sweden to change its flag:

        “The Swedish flag is a constant reminder of our dark and oppressive past,” the petition reads. “Refugees and migrants are forced to live under its Christian Cross; a symbol of the Crusades and the slaughter of millions of innocent Islamic lives in Sweden’s past that makes them feel unwelcome and unsafe.”

       “Sweden should be a safe space for everyone.”

"... slaughter of millions of innocent Islamic lives in Sweden's past..."? I gather that the drafters of the petition don't know much about history ... and don't care.

• This makes the outbreak more interesting: "Shock: Black Death Patients Are ESCAPING The Hospital Over Fear Of Needles As Officials Worry Plague Could Spread"--SHTF Plan. 
• Stating the obvious: "Migrants in Germany are at a disadvantage"--Deutsche Welle. The article notes a German federal government study which observed that uneducated, untrained and illiterate Middle-Eastern and African immigrants were "disadvantaged" when competing for jobs requiring education, training and literacy. 
• Stupid is as stupid does: "One in five illegal immigrants trusted to live in the community GO MISSING before they are deported: Alarming rate of undocumented foreigners are absconding from the controversial 'Alternatives to Detention' program"--Daily Mail. I'm surprised the number is so low. 
• The Gods of the Copybook Headings.... "When Zimbabwe was the bread basket of Africa: Fascinating pictures show flourishing but divided nation before Robert Mugabe took control and left it impoverished"--Daily Mail. Mugabe was (and still is) a darling of Western liberals because he overthrew the "evil" white led government of Rhodesia. The results? 

        Zimbabwe still has the world's third largest reserves of platinum and was once a huge agricultural exporter sending wheat, tobacco, and corn to the rest of the continent and beyond from its fertile farmland. 

        But under Mugabe's leadership, the country's mining and tourism-driven economy has been laid to waste. Hyperinflation has wiped out savings, unemployment is sky-high and economic output has halved since 2000 while seven in ten in the landlocked country of 16 million are stuck in poverty.

• The wages of sin socialism: "North Korean Defector Had 10-Inch Parasite In His Stomach, Unlike Anything Surgeon Had Seen Before"--Newsweek. 
• "Airliners And F-15s Involved In Bizarre Encounter With Mystery Aircraft Over Oregon"--The Drive. An aircraft with no operable transponder and which did not show up on radar was visually tracked traveling north across Oregon and into Washington, flying at about 30,000 feet--the same attitude as many commercial aircraft. The article reports:

Something quite out of the ordinary occurred in the skies over Oregon on October 25th, 2017. A mystery aircraft was flying in daylight hours among the steady stream of airliners that traverse from south to north, between locales in California and Nevada and cities like Portland and Seattle and beyond. The incident began, at least as best we can tell, around 4:30pm near the California-Oregon border and resulted in multiple pilot eyewitnesses, recorded air traffic control audio, and eventual confirmations from both the FAA and North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) that it did indeed occur.

F-15's scrambled to locate the aircraft were not able to spot it or track it. Unfortunately, the commercial pilots that had visually tracked the aircraft for air traffic control never were close enough to identify the aircraft. So, it appears to have been some sort of stealth aircraft; the question remaining, was it one or ours or somebody else's?

• "Mach Effect Propulsion 2016 – it is proven, replicated and will scale to fast interstellar travel"--Next Big Future. "Mach effect" is apparently another term for the EM drive. 

The Mach-Effect thruster is a propellantless propulsion concept that has been in development by J.F. Woodward for more than two decades. It consists of a piezo stack that produces mass fluctuations, which in turn can lead to net time-averaged thrusts. So far, thrusts predictions had to use an efficiency factor to explain some two orders of magnitude discrepancy between model and observations. Here (M Tajmar) presents a detailed 1D analytical model that takes piezo material parameters and geometry dimensions into account leading to correct thrust predictions in line with experimental measurements. Scaling laws can now be derived to improve thrust range and efficiency. An important difference in this study is that only the mechanical power developed by the piezo stack is considered to be responsible for the mass fluctuations, whereas prior works focused on the electrical energy into the system. This may explain why some previous designs did not work as expected. The good match between this new mathematical formulation and experiments should boost confidence in the Mach effect thruster concept to stimulate further developments.

Expectations are that devices delivering 1 Newton of thrust may be possible in a decade.

Update: Correction of typos.