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Monday, December 3, 2018

December 3, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Remington R51 Gen 2 Review"--sootch00 (26 min.)
His conclusion: worked well, shot well, hard to disassemble and reassemble.

  • "The Ever-Changing Nature of Active Killer Response"--Active Response Training. Ellifritz has noticed a disturbing trend of late--active killer's setting up ambushes for police arriving on the scene. For instance, he notes a media report of the Borderland Bar shooting recounting: "After the initial shooting, he positioned himself in anticipation of the police response, Ayub said. When officers entered, he ambushed them immediately from a position of tactical advantage." Ellifritz contends that the shooters have learned that cops will now attempt to stop the shooting immediately, leaving these shooters only 3 to 4 minutes before they will be engaged by police. Consequently, "killers are planning to either escape the scene in the first few minutes or they are setting up ambushes to take out the first couple officers on scene (as seen in the Borderland shooting)." However, he doesn't believe that the answer is to go back to the old tactic of waiting for the SWAT team. Instead, he proposes:
        Officers should make entry independently via different entry points.  Each further arriving officer should make entry from a different door if possible.
            Sending multiple cops on a hunting mission from different angles and entry points makes it very hard for the killer to ambush everyone.  It also makes it far more difficult for the killer to escape.  Whenever I’ve played the role of “bad guy” when multiple independent cops are each seeking me  from a different direction, I’ve been completely tactically overwhelmed.  When cops do this, the bad guy quickly goes on the defensive, saving the lives of both police officers and innocent victims.
             We should be training our cops to make entry from different positions as they arrive on scene.
             Strategic Edge Gun Range was open for night shooting last night (3 Nov. 2018 A.D. till 21:00 hours), so I practiced my flashlight techniques and my left handed flashlight techniques on a steel plate rack and a steel silhouette.  
             But before that, I shot as long as I could in civil twilight to see how dark it had to be before: 
      1.  I could not positively identify my target.
      2.  I could not clearly resolve my front sight from my rear sight. 
             I lost the ability to identify my target long before I lost the ability to resolve my front sight.  This is a big problem.  Because one could confidently shoot at unidentified blobs in low light conditions, convincing oneself that it would be a good shoot because one could aim correctly.  I had to re-emphasize rule 4, Be Sure Of Your Target.  One of the reasons I was able resolve my front sight in low light conditions was that machinist Coach Hoffman had opened up my rear sight notch by 1/100th of an inch.  (This is important.  You need to get this done on your sights, if you can't resolve your front sight from your rear sight in low light conditions.  If you are using tight target sights, you need to change sights or get your rear sight opened up.  We are not target shooting in pristine conditions. We are combat shooting in adverse conditions.) Putting tritium glow in the dark sights creates this same problem, being able to aim long after you can no longer identify your target. 
              I found the Harries technique allowed me to aim by silhouetting my sights against the bright target.  I found the cheek index and crown index allow me to aim by lighting up my sights.  Different sight pictures that need to be practiced, because they don't necessarily give you the same point of impact.  (I'm not sure why, but I'm working on it.)
               I don't have a flashlight attached to my pistol because it's just too easy to search with the flashlight on the pistol, which violates rule 2, Never Let The Muzzle Cover Anything You Are Not Willing To Destroy.  You're going to use your flashlight a lot more than your pistol, so it's best to have a hand held flashlight.
               Shooting with a flashlight in the other hand is effectively one handed shooting.  So, you need to practice one handed shooting, left and right.  Just because you're right handed, does not mean you are going to be right handed in combat.  (This goes for knife fighting too.  If you find yourself in a fight with a knife in your secondary hand, FIGHT!  Don't attempt to transfer the knife into your primary hand.  The transfer takes time and risks losing control of the knife.  Which ever hand is not holding the knife should be holding the front of your neck protecting your carotid arteries.  Marines are called Leathernecks because they wore a leather collar around their necks to protect their carotid arteries.The enemy knows that any attempt on your part to transfer your knife between hands is an opportunity to attack.)
        [C]omparing Japan to the United States is a waste of time. Culture has a lot to do with murder and suicide rates. Japan doesn’t have the rampant illegal drug and gang problem the United States has and they don’t have the associated murder rate to go with it. Murders are very rare in Japan, with any weapon. But their suicide rate is very high — more than twice as high as the United States and virtually all those suicides are committed without a gun.
        • "The Life And Death Of A Mexican Hitman"--Captain's Journal. The article describes that after receiving his assignment, the assassin spends a couple days at a Cartel safe house. During that time "he putters around until early evening, staring at the no-paint, no-plaster walls, wasting time on Facebook, uploading a post honouring his santita, his little saint, a death dispenser’s spiritual partner of choice. La Santa Muerte. The Holy Death." 
        • "THE AREA DENIAL WEAPON"--American Partisan. The author suggests that an AR outfitted with a 20-inch heavy barrel and using larger magazines or drums can serve to provide suppressive fire even without being full-auto.
        • "Civil Disobedience by Gun Owners in the 21st Century?"--The Truth About Guns. The author notes several social movements that were advanced via civil disobedience and asks: 
                   Will gun owners take the same road? Will they start to openly defy and violate gun control laws? We have stories across the country so far from places like Colorado where gun shops only sell 30-round AR magazines, like the failure of firearm registration in New York and Connecticut mentioned earlier. Will gun owners take part in civil disobedience by not turning in their bump fire stocks? Will they openly use them at ranges when the date making them verboten passes?
                   In regards to carry rights, will more gun owners simply bypass government permission in states like California Florida and march while open carrying? In Washington State, will gun owners go to their Capitol and publicly trade firearms without a background completed?
            • "Med Kit Minutiae"--Raconteur Report. Aesop offers some advice on what to pack and, just as importantly, what effects temperature extremes will have kits that are stored in a vehicle. He suggests that "[i]f you put that kit bag inside a $2 Styrofoam picnic cooler (let alone anything sturdier and better made from Coleman, Igloo, Yeti, etc.) before dropping it in a trunk, it will last unattended for much longer. And in a pinch, you’ll have an extra cooler."
            • "Where was this guy when we needed him???"--Bayou Renaissance Man. Link to a video showing a DIY tool that makes filling sandbags much easier and quicker.

            "Volcanic Cooling"--Suspicious Observers (7 min.)
            • Related: "Chinese scientist's gene-edited babies have opened Pandora's box. Brace yourselves."--San Diego Union-Tribune. Money quote: "Imagine the immense resentment when it is reported — as it surely will be someday — that super-rich people are having genetically engineered children that are genetic all-stars. The 1 percenters already have a profound ability to make their children’s lives’ better; now they get to have a giant new advantage?"
            • "The New Evolution Deniers"--Quillette. Conservative Christians are generally presented as the group opposed to teaching evolution. But as genetic differences in personality and behavior have been discovered, it is increasing behavioral psychologists that are digging in their heals against evolution. An excerpt:
                      Despite there being zero evidence in favor of Blank Slate psychology, and a mountain of evidence to the contrary, this belief has entrenched itself within the walls of many university humanities departments where it is often taught as fact. Now, armed with what they perceive to be an indisputable truth questioned only by sexist bigots, they respond with well-practiced outrage to alternative views. This has resulted in a chilling effect that causes scientists to self-censor, lest these activists accuse them of bigotry and petition their departments for their dismissal. I’ve been privately contacted by close, like-minded colleagues warning me that my public feuds with social justice activists on social media could be occupational suicide, and that I should disengage and delete my comments immediately. My experience is anything but unique, and the problem is intensifying. Having successfully cultivated power over administrations and silenced faculty by inflicting reputational terrorism on their critics and weaponizing their own fragility and outrage, social justice activists now justifiably think there is no belief or claim too dubious that administrations won’t cater to it. Recently, this fear has been realized as social justice activists attempt to jump the epistemological shark by claiming that the very notion of biological sex, too, is a social construct.
                        As a biologist, it is hard to understand how anyone could believe something so outlandish. It’s a belief on a par with the belief in a flat Earth. 
                And the article doesn't even broach the subject of genetics and intelligence. That is, perhaps, a bridge too far for even the author.
                         As the polls closed on election day last month, six California Republican House candidates, including Representatives Dana Rohrabacher, Steve Knight, and Mimi Walters, were ahead in their respective races. However, as the absentee and provisional ballots rolled in over the intervening weeks, all six lost to their Democratic opponents.
                           The case of Korean-American GOP candidate Young Kim was one of the most prominent examples. On election night, Kim held an 8,000 vote lead over her Democratic opponent Gil Cisneros, and even attended freshman orientation in Washington, D.C. before watching her lead, and her victory, slowly evaporate over the subsequent weeks.
                            Southwest Key has collected $1.7 billion in federal grants in the past decade, including $626 million in the past year alone. But as it has grown, tripling its revenue in three years, the organization has left a record of sloppy management and possible financial improprieties, according to dozens of interviews and an examination of documents. It has stockpiled tens of millions of taxpayer dollars with little government oversight and possibly engaged in self-dealing with top executives.
                    * * *
                            Southwest Key has created a web of for-profit companies — construction, maintenance, food services and even a florist — that has funneled money back to the charity through high management fees and helps it circumvent government limits on executive pay.
                    * * *
                           The organization, sitting on $61 million in cash as of last fall, has lent millions of dollars to real estate developers, acting more like a bank than a traditional charity. It has opted to rent shelters rather than buy them, an unusual practice that has proved lucrative for shelter owners — who include Mr. Sanchez and the charity’s chief financial officer.
                    But Sanchez assures us that it is all about the children.
                    Yesterday I described how complementarians used deception to replicate in conservative churches what feminists had already accomplished in liberal churches.  With their feminist victory in the final mopping up stages, several prominent complementarians have started switching their focus to pushing LGBT acceptance in conservative churches.  Key to the complementarian approach in both cases is to pretend they are really there to protect the church from the assaults of the culture war.  Complementarians know that if they become the defenders of conservative christian culture they can use their trusted position to dismantle the defenses.
                    • And a huge blow to anthropology: "Turns Out Mitochondria Don't Work Like We Thought They Did"--Popular Mechanics. If you read a book or watch a documentary about using genetics to track the spread of populations, you will hear about Mitochondrial DNA. The reason is that the Mitochondria in our cells have their own DNA, separate from those our body otherwise uses, and this DNA is only passed through the maternal line. Except, as this article notes, recent research indicates that it isn't only passed through the maternal line, but can come from the father. The article explains:
                              The standard DNA in your chromosomes are a mash-up of your father’s and mother’s DNA, combined together with a handful of random mutations thrown into the mix. That makes it tough for geneticists and anthropologists to trace your genetic line through the ages. But with mitochondrial DNA only from your mother—and Y chromosome DNA only from your father, if you’re male—researchers can tease apart genetic lineages and paint a clearer picture of your heritage.
                              But new research suggests that in some cases, mitochondrial DNA can be inherited from fathers, too. A group of researchers found three unrelated families where individuals had mitochondrial DNA from both parents. A total of 17 people across these three families were affected, suggesting that mitochondria aren’t as exclusively maternal as scientists believed.
                                It’s tough to say just how common this condition is, since most people haven’t had their mitochondrial DNA sequenced. But this paper shows that this sort of thing does happen, and it might be possible that it could happen to a lot of people. If that’s true, it could call into question a lot of the findings from genetic anthropology.
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