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Friday, July 27, 2018

July 27, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Max Talk 028: Close Quarter Battle / Demonstration Video"--Max Velocity (14 min.)


  • This week's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training.
  • From earlier this week, Grant Cunningham's Hump Day Reading List for July 25, 2018. One thing in particular I want to point you to are an article and Cunningham's comments regarding identification of a target at night. Basically, Cunningham recommends that when you hear that "bump" in the night, that the first thing you grab be a flashlight. He states: "Responsible defensive gun use demands positive identification of your target (threat) before pulling the trigger, and you can’t do that if you can’t see it. (And no — a weapon-mounted light is NOT a substitute for a flashlight.)" Again, this is a situation where you have to weigh speed versus safety. In some cases, such as the door being kicked in, it may be enough to identify that a person is a threat without having to get enough light on the subject that you could later give a detailed description. But you also don't want to shoot someone in your household who is sneaking in late, bumbling around in the dark after using the toilet, or the drunk neighbor that happened to stumble up to the wrong door.
  • Gun control was never the reason for England's historically low murder rates: "England Knife, Gun, Rape Attacks and Homicide Continue Rapid Rise"--Breitbart. The statistics are for 12 months period ending in March 2018. It shows that versus a year ago, rapes have increased by 31%, homicides rose by 12%, gun crimes rose 2%, knife crimes rose 16%, and robberies increased by 30%.
  • Some interesting history and legend: "Joaquin Murrieta: The Mexican Headless Horseman"--Shooting Times. Murrieta was a California prospector turned bandit that has quite a few tales told of his exploits in California, becoming over time, a Robin Hood type of character. But, as to the title of the story, Murrieta was eventually killed in a shootout, and his head removed as proof that he was dead. Witnesses claimed to have seen him afterward, from which sprang stories that he would ride around seeking to reclaim his head.
  • "FBI Physical Fitness Test App Released"--Tactical Wire. The app supposedly is intended to get aspiring agents up to the physical fitness required of FBI agents. The question is whether you trust the FBI enough to install this app on your phone. The app is available for free from the App Store and Google Play. The article also links to brochures and a video produced by the FBI concerning the app.
  • Most Mini-14 owners will never need to use this information. "Maintaining Ruger Mini-14 Rifles"--Gun Tests. The article discusses that the most common problem is a heavy buildup of carbon deposits in the gas system, and explains how to clean it.  
  • "Advanced Skills"--Mountain Guerrilla. A reminder that "advanced skills" are pretty much just the basic skills practiced to the point that they are smooth and fast. He writes:
        There are no advanced techniques, but, as Paul pointed out in his comment, “…there is advanced application.” You’ll know you’re advanced when you can do it without trying so hard. You’ll know you’re advanced, when you’re thinking about what you’re going to do, three steps ahead of where you are now. You’ll know you’re advanced when you no longer worry about being advanced.
            Quit looking for the “Secret Scrolls of Knowledge of the Sect of Secret Squirrels,” and follow Paul’s suggestion: “Do the work.”
    Women tend to put the same kind of emphasis on status that men put on beauty. That doesn’t mean it’s the end all and be all of everything, but it does mean status is a lot more important to women than it is to men. What that means is that as a man, if you ever stop performing at the level your woman is accustomed to, you may lose her regardless of everything else. Lose your job, get demoted, take a big pay cut, lose your moxie somehow and women are much more likely to walk away than a man would be with a woman in the same situation. That doesn’t mean it’s a given, but it does mean that going backward in status as a man risks your relationship with a woman.
               In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they “were taught to treat everyone the same,” that they are “color-blind,” that they “don’t care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted.” They will point to friends and family members of color, a history of civil-rights activism, or a more “salient” issue, such as class or gender. They will shout and bluster. They will cry. In 2011, DiAngelo coined the term “white fragility” to describe the disbelieving defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged—and particularly when they feel implicated in white supremacy. Why, she wondered, did her feedback prompt such resistance, as if the mention of racism were more offensive than the fact or practice of it?
                In a new book, “White Fragility,” DiAngelo attempts to explicate the phenomenon of white people’s paper-thin skin. She argues that our largely segregated society is set up to insulate whites from racial discomfort, so that they fall to pieces at the first application of stress—such as, for instance, when someone suggests that “flesh-toned” may not be an appropriate name for a beige crayon. Unused to unpleasantness (more than unused to it—racial hierarchies tell white people that they are entitled to peace and deference), they lack the “racial stamina” to engage in difficult conversations. This leads them to respond to “racial triggers”—the show “Dear White People,” the term “wypipo”—with “emotions such as anger, fear and guilt,” DiAngelo writes, “and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.”
        We aren't allowed to have an honest conversation about race at the risk of our jobs, careers, or ostracism, and this woman has the temerity to blame it on "fragility"? 
                  The research reports that sudden cold spells, lasting hundreds of years, took place in the middle of the warm Eemian climate period, about 120 thousand years ago. These cold intervals saw a fall in temperature of a few degrees, and replacement of forests by tundra, at the study site in northern Finland. The Eemian, which took place before the last Ice Age, had a climate generally warmer than present. This has made the Eemian important for climate scientists assessing the modern climate warming.
                   According to the researchers, the sudden shifts of Eemian climate are connected to disturbances in North Atlantic circulation which happened during that time. Today, the warm oceanic currents of the North Atlantic maintain a relatively temperate climate in Europe. The future development of this oceanic circulation has been hard to predict, however, and possible disturbances have not been ruled out.
            Overall climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling in a general circulation model results from a complex system of parameterizations in combination with the underlying model structure. We refer to this as the model's “major hypothesis” and we assume it to be testable. We explain four criteria a valid test should meet: measurability, specificity, independence and uniqueness. We argue that temperature change in the tropical 200‐300 hPa layer meets these criteria. Comparing modeled to observed trends over the past 60 years using a persistence‐robust variance estimator shows that all models warm more rapidly than observations and in the majority of individual cases the discrepancy is statistically significant. We argue that this provides informative evidence against the major hypothesis in most current climate models.
            In other words, current climate models are wrong and overestimate warming.
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