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Friday, March 1, 2019

March 1, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"The Massive Flood That Triggered an Ice Age"--Sci Show (6 min.)
Another theory regarding the cause of the Younger Dryas.

  • TGIF: Active Response Training's Weekend Knowledge Dump. Links to lots of good articles as always. A small taste: articles on evaluating blunt head trauma, a reminder that armed citizens are 94% successful in active shooting incidents, and a link to a series of articles that discuss issues or problems for the left-handed shooter. Anyway, check it out.
  • While you are at Greg Ellifritz's site, there are couple articles you should also look at from this past week:
  • "Don’t Dig the Rig #20"--Active Response Training. In this particular critique of a "Dig The Rig" post, Ellifritz notes that the author admits that he is carrying a pistol that he doesn't like and doesn't trust, but is using because it was a gift and he had a holster that fit it. Basic lesson: "If the gun doesn’t work, get rid of it!" I have to add my own concurrence to what Ellifritz writes in this article. I know from my own experience that if you don't like the gun, whether its the way it looks or feels in the hand, or it weighs too much or is to bulky, or just doesn't shoot well, you aren't going to carry it. I went through several handguns and probably twice as many holsters before I finally found a handgun and holster combination I like (actually, I have two holsters for the handgun: a belt holster and a pocket holster). I will periodically try other handguns and/or holsters to see if I can find something I like better.
  • "Tactical Training Scenario- Violent Car Jacking Attempt"--Active Response Training. In this article, Ellifritz provides commentary about an incident caught on surveillance camera where I guy walks up to a woman, punches her in the mouth (effectively taking her out of the fight) and then begins trying to rob her. Ellifritz discusses the attack and warning signs, as well as the need to be aware of what is going on around you. Read the whole thing. On a related note, you should also read "Women's Self Defense: Situational Awareness and Public Places" at Range365. Despite the title, it has some great tips and advice concerning situational awareness useful for women and men.
       The FBI report found violent crime decreased by 4.3 percent between 2017 and 2018. That represents a significant drop compared with last year when violent crime was down only by 0.8 percent.
           Robbery and burglary saw the largest decrease of the crimes tracked by the FBI with the former dropping 12.5 percent and the later dropping 12.7 percent. Arson dropped 9.4 percent, property crime fell 7.2 percent, murder was down 6.7 percent, larceny fell 6.3 percent, car theft fell 3.3 percent, and aggravated assault was down 2 percent. Rape, the only crime to see an increase, was up 0.6 percent.
            The FBI said violent crime dropped throughout most of the country, though the West saw a 0.2 percent increase and dropped in both cities and rural areas. Cities, especially smaller cities, saw the largest decrease.
      Republicans did score a victory during Wednesday’s action, tacking on an amendment requiring NICS to notify the Department of Homeland Security any time an illegal immigrant tries to buy a gun. Deportation officers would then be able to decide whether to try to pick the person up.
      Democrats had previously rejected this provision because, well, illegal immigration.
      • "The Retardation of the Firearms Industry"--Scott Cee at The Havoc Journal (h/t TTAG). Cee asserts in this 2015 article that: "Most of the people you see promoting the industry today have no experience, no background, and no idea how to properly test, evaluate, or describe the proper application of a product." It is a point well taken: I hear things at the gun counter, or read things on forums that are obviously very wrong. But is can also be a mistake to automatically reject something that you hear because of the person stating it. For instance, something I see or hear over and over is that someone that has never been in gun fight can't really teach you about it. And my mind immediately goes to Mass Ayoob, who, to my knowledge, has never been in an actual gun fight. But he has studied and researched the topic so much that he is considered one of the top experts in the field. I think the point is to learn enough that you can distinguish the useful information from the useless, and learn who are reliable sources of information--people knowledgeable about what they know, and honest enough to either not comment on issues outside their expertise, or research it before giving you an answer. 
      • "Review: .357 Ring of Fire"--Shooting Illustrated. Someone has come up with another version of the .357 SIG, except this uses a straight wall cartridge and shoots honest to goodness .357 caliber projectiles. Per the article, "[a]t 1,335 fps this [125-grain Nosler] load duplicates the best .357 SIG offerings." But .357 SIG didn't really offer any appreciable advantage over the 9 mm. If this new cartridge could take advantage of the full .357 lineup of bullets, both for self-defense and hunting, offering similar velocity, that would be one thing. But if it is just going to be a different flavor of 9 mm +P, what's the point?
      • "DIY Guide: $6 Cardboard Target Stand"--The Firearm Blog. A couple ideas for inexpensive target stands. The $6 stand that is the primary topic of the article uses spikes, however, to keep it upright. The problem I face in my area is often of the ground being too rocky to use spiked stands. I've had good luck with a stand that I made from PVC, although it cost about $20 to make. My original plan was to fill the ends of the PVC "feet" with cement to give it the weight to stay upright in winds. However, I often take jugs of water out to shoot, so I just use those to keep the stand in place, and shoot the water jugs as a finale. 
      • "20mm Anti-Aircraft Munitions Washing Up On Shore In Washington State"--The Firearm Blog. These appear to be explosive shells. Interestingly, and something for those interested in ooparts to take note of, is that although the shells are from WWII or later, they are already encased in a black rock type material. I think of this because a famous oopart object found encased in rock, and assumed to be quite ancient as a consequence, was actually just a spark plug manufactured in the early 20th Century.
      • "Tommy Waller: U.S. Power Grid Vulnerable to Everything from EMP Bombs to Rifle Bullets"--Breitbart. An excerpt:
                 With over 300 million users, the complex American power grid is “the foundation upon which all of our critical infrastructures function,” and Waller cautioned it has several components that are particularly vulnerable to sabotage.
                  “One of them are these extra-high-voltage transformers, EHV transformers,” he said. “In order for electricity to be transmitted over a long distance, they have to step the voltage up. At the end of that transfer, they have to step the voltage down.”
                    “Those transformers are essentially irreplaceable. It takes about 18 months to build them. They’re custom-built, almost exclusively overseas. We have roughly 2,000 of these EHV transformers around the country and most of them are completely unprotected,” he said.
                     Waller said another vulnerability is presented by the SCADA controls, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition computers that allow the grid to function.
                       “Without the SCADAs to run the grid, you could of course have an upset. You could have some limited damage. But the transformers – without those transformers in our current grid infrastructure, if those were to go away, you would have a loss of electricity for a very, very long time,” he said.
                         Waller clarified that sabotage, which could involve methods as crude as physically wrecking the transformers with simple weapons or explosives, could compromise the power grid for much longer than the days or weeks of power loss associated with hurricanes and other natural events.
                           “A study done by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found that just the right nine substations attacked in the United States – if someone just with rifles attacked the right nine substations – the cascading failures and power outages could put us in a blackout that could last about 18 months,” he reported.


                    "they lied to me when I was a teenage girl. now I face reality"--Georgia Free (5 min.)
                    The author explains why feminism's promise of greater freedom and happiness through becoming a wage slave was a lie.

                            Surprisingly little has changed over the past year in terms of cartel dynamics. Various leaders and lieutenants have been arrested or killed, and additional splintering has continued for some already fractured groups, but by and large, 2018 was characterized by a stasis in the conflict zones of the assorted factions.
                             In the past, periods of stasis often entailed that cartel groups were staying within their areas of control and that violence would be lower. However, in the current period, large and bloody struggles are continuing unresolved, and cartel groups remain locked in nasty turf wars. This environment means that most of these clashes will rage on well into 2019.
                               This violence has been reflected in the murder statistics, as the homicide figure for 2018 hit 33,341 — far surpassing the 2017 tally of 29,168.
                        • Canada's substitute drama teacher Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, may be in trouble. "Trudeau and Wilson-Raybould: The scandal that could unseat Canada's PM"--BBC. Basic story: "Mr Trudeau has been accused of pressuring his former attorney general to cut a deal with a company facing corruption charges - and retaliating when she refused to play ball." 
                        • Global warming in action: "A February to remembrrr in L.A.: It never even reached 70 degrees"--Los Angeles Times. Keep in mind that L.A. is a heat island, and that these temperatures (according to the article) were from downtown L.A.
                        • The decline of civilization: "Calif. math prof applicants better have 'diversity contributions' on their resumes"--Campus Reform. "According to the current job postings for these positions, applications must include a 'diversity statement' detailing the applicants’ 'past and/or potential contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion.'" These are for tenured positions, not adjunct. In other words, white applicants need not apply for tenure. 
                        • Another victory for feminism: "Good Jobs … But No Workers"--Rod Dreher at The American Conservative. One of Dreher's readers emailed him about the problems his company has finding skilled workers and the coming consequences:
                                  In the next 10-20 years, about half their skilled workforce is going to retire, and there is nobody behind those people. They all left. Right now, they figure that even if every single local high school graduate went to work in local factories, we would not be able to keep up with demand. Despite constant automation and improved efficiencies.
                                  Most of the plants here are on mandatory overtime. They do not have enough workers to fill the jobs. Despite recent efforts to ramp up starting pay dramatically.
                              Nevertheless, the reader who sent the comments notes how he regularly sees men simply not doing any work around his town that could have a job if they simply bothered to apply. Dreher responded:
                                This is about culture. I was just telling a reader today, in correspondence, about how a family doctor friend of mine is seeing the rise of “failsons” in his middle and upper middle class patients. These are young men with all the educational advantages of their class, but they just have no desire to work, or to do anything but sit around. You can’t blame it on poverty or deprivation. So what is it?
                                  In a follow up article, "People Who Don’t Want To Work," Dreher fields comments from managers from all around the country having trouble finding people to fill jobs even with good pay and benefits and training provided by the companies.
                                          I'm just going to spit-ball this, but my belief is that this may be part of a larger problem of men going on strike, so to speak, and dropping out of society. It is my belief that civilization is the product of beta men in cultures where such men have a good chance of having a wife and kids. A lot has been written about the hypergamy/"where have all the good men gone" dynamic, but the reality is that family formation is collapsing in the United States. I suspect that if young men are disincentivised to form families, they also will have little interest in seeking out the training or jobs necessary to support a family. Basically, if they aren't going to have a family, its just easier to stay at home or take a part-time, no-skill job that pays for rent and video games. 
                                  We dehumanise other people when we conceive of them as subhuman creatures. Dehumanisers do not think of their victims as subhuman in some merely metaphorical or analogical sense. They think of them as actually subhuman. The Nazis didn’t just call Jews vermin. They quite literally conceived of them as vermin in human form.
                                  The author goes on to discuss the concept of dehumanizing and how it is used to not only justify killing in war, but has justified genocide. Nothing in the article, though, about Hillary calling Trump supporters "deplorables" or the rationalization necessary for aborting babies in the third trimester. 
                                          Their crimes ranged from shoplifting to embezzlement to murder. Some of them molested kids and downloaded child pornography. Others beat their wives, girlfriends or children.
                                           The one thing they had in common: a badge.
                                            Thousands of California law enforcement officers have been convicted of a crime in the past decade, according to records released by a public agency that sets standards for officers in the Golden State.
                                              The revelations are alarming, but the state’s top cop says Californians don’t have a right to see them. In fact, Attorney General Xavier Becerra warned two Berkeley-based reporters that simply possessing this never-before-publicly-released list of convicted cops is a violation of the law.
                                          One hundred years have passed since the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 swept around the world, circumnavigating at least twice between 1918 and 1920, killing outright between 50 and 100 million human beings. The pandemic was so shattering, so pervasive that more accurate numbers of the dead cannot be calculated. Those who lived in developed countries like the United States fared little better than those in less developed nations — once the influenza struck, the victim either recovered after a week of unpleasant flu symptoms or died rapidly, sometimes within hours., with lungs filled with fluids and blood. Influenza, caused by a virus, usually kills the very young, the weak and the very old. But the 1918 Flu, sometimes called “the Spanish Flu”, seemed to preferentially kill young, strong, otherwise healthy men and women in their 20’s, a demographic that normally fared well with only mild symptoms in other flu seasons.
                                            Despite its name, it isn't clear where the pandemic originated. It was called the Spanish Flu because wartime censorship wouldn't allow reporting about the pandemic among the combatants (e.g., an English reporter couldn't report on flu losses among allied troops), but Spain was neutral and so reporters could write articles about the flu epidemic in Spain. The war likely contributed to the spread of the flu, however, because of the large movements of men around the world, whether G.I.s from the United States going to Europe, or Chinese workers shipped to France to do menial labor, or the presence of various colonial troops. Part of the mystery of the flu, however, is that it struck populations that should have been too isolated to have been exposed. Sir Fred Hoyle, a famous astronomer, has suggested that the Spanish flu was an example of panspermia, linking major outbreaks to solar cycles. (See also here). Another researcher has wondered whether the 1918 flu might have been linked to a strong El Nino event.
                                                       But nanoparticles inserted into the eyes of mice boosted their vision beyond the normal range of colours they can detect and enabled the rodents to see infrared light.
                                                       Lead researcher Dr Tian Xue said the applications include military use and could be adapted to treat people who are colour blind and can’t detect red.
                                                         “We believe this technology will also work in human eyes, not only for generating super vision but also for therapeutic solutions in human red colour vision deficits,” said Dr Xue.
                                                          “This is an exciting subject because the technology we made possible here could eventually enable human beings to see beyond our natural capabilities."
                                                           The research was published in Cell an[d] tested the nanoparticles in mice which, like humans, cannot see infrared naturally.
                                                      So, in the future, we can all be Riddick.
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                                                      Weekend Reading

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