A Quick Run Around the Web (11/14/2019)

"Tips for Dealing with Protests, Riots and Civil Unrest"--Modern Survivalist (8 min.)

• "Movement Principles"--Rory Miller. An excerpt:

I used to embarrass my kids when I'd take them to the playground and climb around more than they did. One of my tricks was to go to the swings. The big ones where steel poles making an inverted V on the ends to support the main beam that the swings hang from. I'd put one hand on each of the V supports and climb to the top just by swinging side to side and letting my hands move up. It was a way to climb with almost no muscle-- just structure and the momentum of the swing, which relied on gravity. Hadn't thought of that as principles until Stefano demonstrated almost the same technique for traversing.

• "Precision Rifle Reloading for the Beginner"--The Firearm Blog. Sorting cases by manufacturer and then measuring weight and certain dimensions to minimize variances. 
• "All Choked Up"--Shooting Times. An indepth discussion of chokes--a bit of history, the difference sizes of chokes, and different types of chokes.
• I like mine: "Review: Ruger Wrangler Revolver"--Recoil Magazine. From the article:

       It shoots well, especially for the price. It also functioned 100% reliably, and the only real issues with it are the low-grade finish, some mold lines on the cast frame, and a trigger that, while not bad, could be better. Are these deal breakers? 

       On something that costs $300 or more, I would say yes. On something that I picked up for $200, tax included? I don’t think so. This isn’t a self-defense gun, this isn’t a competition gun, this is a kit gun. A fun plinker. A cheap, but reliable companion to keep in your glovebox to dispatch squirrels, rabbits, snakes, and other pests. It’s just as reliable as the Single Six, and at just a touch over 1/3rd of the price. 

      It’s light enough to live in a backpack with a hundred rounds if you’re going camping, and its accurate enough to blow holes in cans all day long. I’ve got to be pushing 750 rounds through the gun already and I’ve yet to have a single issue other than the occasional dud round from cheap bulk ammo packs.

• Related: "The New Ruger Wrangler Rimfire Revolver"--Real Guns. 

• "Center Mass in a Three-Dimensional World"--Moderno. Summary:

... We shoot to stop the threat and doing so means targeting the center of what is offered, or exercising discipline until you can maneuver for a clear shot or wait for the threat to give you one. We should be wary of anything that always works on paper, just as we should probably be dubious of magic formulas that require a specific set of circumstances to work. The only off switch is a hit (or more) to the central nervous system. Outside of that, you can and should expect a threat to continue to fight regardless of where or how many times you hit them. Until they lose consciousness or surrender, they are still a threat and should be treated as such by the continued use of controlled violence so long as you have a clear shot.

• "Doc, How Do I Know Where I Should Shoot?"--James Williams, M.D. at USCCA. Excerpt:

     “Center Mass” is a myth. It’s a term used by trainers who don’t have a clue where to shoot a human being to stop him, and it’s a term that must be expunged from our vocabulary.

     In short, “center mass” means nothing more than “shoot him somewhere in the middle.” Well, that won’t get you very far. If you look at the picture on page 25, you’ll see a standard police B27 training target that I shot 60 times using a standard police qualification course of fire. If you look at the score, you’ll see that I made 299/300 points, which is pretty good shooting.

     But before I shot that course of fire, I drew the vital anatomy of the human torso on the back of the target. As you can see, 59 of my 60 bullets, which were perfect hits for scoring purposes, failed to hit the vital organs in the chest: the heart or Great Vessels. My single miss, in the 9-ring, was the only shot that hit in the vital zone.

     This illustrates the problem of shooting people “somewhere in the middle.” As you can see from this illustration, the vital organs of the thorax are well above the middle of the human torso. Shoot a violent felon in the guts, and he’s likely to have your guts for his dinner!

I think that part of the problem with the older targets and ideas of "center of mass" is that concepts were taken from 20th Century military training for use on the battlefield where soldiers were taught to shoot (for instance) at the waist or beltline in order to insure a hit at distance.

• "The Bell-Curve: Shooting Practice by the Odds"--Growing Up Guns. The author suggests looking at statistics to determine what you should practice the most: e.g., retrieving a firearm from a place of storage; practicing drawing to the first shot from however you normally carry your weapon; use decisional drills to train yourself to think and make rational decisions (for instance, shoot/no-shoot); use targets that mimic the size of the target area you want to hit in a defensive situation.
• "Kung-Fu for the Concealed Carrier"--Active Response Training. A look at why concealed carriers need to learn some empty-hand skills.

A recent article that I wrote for CCW Safe titled “The Rule of Threes” pointed out that the average distance criminal assaults occurred was maybe as close as three yards.  Concealed carriers whose sole defensive option was a concealed handgun are likely at a great disadvantage when it comes to dealing with a motivated attacker who suddenly initiates an assault using his (or her) bare hands, a concealed edged weapon, or a blunt instrument.

• "Heretofore Otherwise Law-Abiding Gun Owners"--Dispatches from Heck. From the article:

     I use that rather longish phrase to introduce a contra-intuitive notion:   the people we always thought of as 'most likely to obey the law' have changed their attitudes, their positions relative to the law, and their willingness to be bullied.

     In times past, legislators could pass laws and be relatively certain that the bulk of the population would honor the law with their obedience even as the criminal element took the opposite tack.   It appears that is no longer the case.   It appears now that — at least as far as gun control laws are concerned — the overwhelming response is not obedience but defiance.

• "Face masks to decoy t-shirts: The rise of anti-surveillance fashion"--Reuters. 
• "Best Tools to Perform Steganography [Updated 2019]"--Infosec.
• "Top 10 Must-Have tools to perform Steganography"--Grey Campus.
• "Eavesdropping Through a Wall"--Schneier on Security.

     It is easy to defeat ordinary audio eavesdropping, just by sound-proofing a room. And simply drawing the curtains can defeat newer systems, which shine a laser beam onto a glass window and decode any modulation of the reflected beam caused by sound vibrations in the room.

     So the new "through-the-wall audio surveillance system" uses a powerful beam of very high frequency radio waves instead of light. Radio can penetrate walls – if they didn't, portable radios wouldn't work inside a house.

     The system uses a horn antenna to radiate a beam of microwave energy –between 30 and 100 gigahertz – through a building wall. If people are speaking inside the room, any flimsy surface, such as clothing, will be vibrating. This modulates the radio beam reflected from the surface.

     Although the radio reflection that passes back through the wall is extremely faint, the kind of electronic extraction and signal cleaning tricks used by NASA to decode signals in space can be used to extract speech.

• Related: "Eavesdropping using microwaves - addendum"--EE Times.

• "Statistician Rethinks Gun Control After Digging into the Data"--DC Dirty Laundry.

      From silencers, to bans on “assault weapons,” to magazine capacity limits, all of the policy prescriptions she had heard politicians talk about for years would be basically meaningless, Libresco concluded upon digging into the numbers.

     The truth is suicide counts for the vast majority of gun deaths in the U.S (two-thirds). The next largest death figures come from homicides involving young men (15-34), deaths that often involve gang conflicts in which shooters use firearms obtained unlawfully. Gun legislation, she concluded, would have a minimal impact on gun deaths in the U.S. But that doesn’t mean we should do nothing.

• "The Best Self Defense Ammo – Ballistic Testing"--Ammo to Go. Another resource for ballistic testing of popular self-defense rounds.

• Related: "Best 9mm Carry Ammo"--Active Response Training.

• "FLUTED AMMO: GREAT OR GIMMIK?"--Guns Magazine.

Why am I interested in fluted bullets? As a handgun instructor and someone who carries a concealed pistol every day, I research defensive ammo on a regular basis. When I’m making a recommendation to students and determining what to carry in my own gun, I want to know what will do the job and what won’t. With so many excellent brands of JHP handgun ammo on the market, there was something in particular about this new type of ammo which attracted my attention: the promise of low recoil while still offering effective wound ballistics. The projectiles are light and need less propellant to make them travel very fast.

Also:

Results in 10 percent ballistic gelatin shows ARX and Lehigh bullets produce large temporary cavities when striking soft targets through rotational and lateral transfer of energy. As this energy is being transferred laterally, the forward motion stops, usually within 16". Unlike JHPs there is no chance of cavity plugging by denim, leather or other material prior to entering the target.

• "PREVENT FROZEN PIPES – EXTREME COLD OPTIONS, PLUS CONSTRUCTION TIPS"--Common Sense Home.
• "How To Purify Water With Iodine And Chlorine Tablets"--Survivopedia. The initial caveats:

Regardless of whether the disease risk is caused by other campers or animals in the area, understanding the uses of iodine and chlorine is very important. It should be noted these tablets only address pathogens in the water. They cannot and will not substitute for good personal hygiene. They also do not address heavy metals, toxic waste, nuclear contamination, debris, or other problems. 

A couple other points: iodine only works within certain temperature ranges (the water must be 68 degrees F or higher) and chlorine may not kill all pathogens in surface water. Anyway, good article so check it out.

"Does Life Need a Multiverse to Exist?"--Space Time (17 min.)

• Refugees welcome: "Sweden's 100 explosions this year: What's going on?"--BBC.

     This category of crime was not even logged prior to 2017. Then, in 2018, there were 162 explosions and in the past two months alone the bomb squad have been called to almost 30.

     "Bangers, improvised explosives and hand grenades" are behind most of the blasts, says Linda H Straaf, head of intelligence at Sweden's National Operations Department.

And:

     Swedish police do not record or release the ethnicity of suspects or convicted criminals, but intelligence chief Linda H Straaf says many do share a similar profile.

     "They have grown up in Sweden and they are from socio-economically weak groups, socio-economically weak areas, and many are perhaps second- or third-generation immigrants," she says.

• Related: "Denmark Introduces Internal Border Checks with Sweden, Extends Those with Germany"--Schengen Visa Info. Denmark is tightening its borders because of explosions set off by criminals it believes to have come from Sweden.

• Diversity is a strength: "Anti-police violence surges in the tough suburbs of Paris"--AP. The article reports:

      Maj. William Blanchet, who represents the Unite SGP police union in the Yvelines region that includes Chanteloup and other towns where police patrols have been assaulted, said the youths involved seem to be targeting officers for their own amusement.

     “They draw in the police with a fire, hide themselves around that spot, and then they attack,” he said.

     Police were lured to Chanteloup by calls that a trash bin had been set ablaze. Callers also reported seeing hooded youths filing bags with stones. Police union officials said about 30 youths, some armed with batons, joined the rampage. Police made two arrests.

• More diversity in action: "With O’Neill’s resignation, who’s going to clean up de Blasio’s mess now?"--New York Post.

     Open contempt for the NYPD is a thing now. They were pouring water on cops — and, once, even a carton of milk — this summer because they had every reason to believe they could get away with it. And, by and large, they were right.

     Now they’re trashing cop cars in public; marching by the hundreds in Brooklyn to spew vile anti-NYPD invective; openly defying officers in the subways and on the streets — and basically they’re getting away with that, too.

• "Father uses his 11-month-old son as a 'human shield' in a shootout over a drug deal - leaving the baby in a critical condition with wounds to his head, neck and buttocks"--Daily Mail. The father, Nafes Monroe, thought that by bringing his infant son, Yazeem Munir Jenkins, and girlfriend, the drug dealers from whom he was buying drugs with counterfeit money wouldn't shoot at him. But Francisco Ortiz didn't see it that way.
• "Nearly 40% of 2019 farm income will come from federal aid and insurance"--Axios. Per the article, "The Agriculture Department projects that farm incomes will reach $88 billion in 2019 but nearly 40% of that — $33 billion — will come from trade aid, disaster assistance, the farm bill and insurance indemnities, according to a new report by the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF)." 
• "Why What You Do In The Bedroom Doesn’t Ever Stay There"--The Federalist. 

     Monogamy as a community’s sexual norm simply makes for a much better society. Citizens are more likely to thrive, particularly women and children. In fact, the article attributes “democratic rights and civil liberties” to “the strength of normative monogamy,” concluding, “The peculiar institution of monogamous marriage may help explain why democratic ideals and notions of equality first emerged in the West.”

     Monogamy, as a one-to-one negotiation, democratizes sexuality, making women more powerful agents in domestic and sexual relationships. This allows for and facilitates the democratization of the people at large.

     Single and polygamous men collect women as sexual and domestic objects, which requires competition among men and the subjugation of women. As more women are collected by richer, more powerful men, the poorer, less attractive men must resort to trickery and violence to gain access to a smaller and more competitive market. This has egregious consequences for the community. Unexpectedly, these scholars found that normative monogamy reduced a community’s rates of overall violence by half.

A lot in the article, so read the whole thing.

• "No respect for men who marry single mothers."--Dalrock. Apparently there are some theologians that preach that single (i.e., out of wedlock) mothers are some great blessing and that the man who marries one should be extra grateful for the opportunity. To such, Dalrock writes:

       But what Parkison and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary are doing here is cruel to all involved.  It is cruel to single mothers for encouraging them to count their past sin as a gift to their future husband, instead of helping them see that while our sins are forgiven in Christ, the temporal consequences of our sins remains.  Instead of encouraging humility regarding their past sins, he encourages them to see themselves as a more attractive prospect as a Christian wife.  It is cruel to the Christian men reading as well, because it teaches them to deny the sins of women and therefore sets them and their families up for even more misery.

     Lastly, the whole perspective betrays a contempt for Christian married fathers, especially the Christian men who marry repentant single mothers with full understanding of what they are taking on.  Instead of treating these men with respect, Parkison dismisses their graciousness by pretending it wasn’t gracious at all!  Parkison is stealing other men’s graciousness for himself.

• "An expert looks at the gender wars & sees wonders ahead!"--Fabius Maximus. 

I think we will see a creeping panic from our ruling class as they realize that by replacing the marriage based family model with one founded on child support they have removed the incentive for men to produce the kinds of excess wealth that our progressive tax structure requires. Even worse, fatherless children are (on average) far more expensive to society than fathered children are, and this is true for life. So the income stream is at risk, and the expenses are going up.

• "Scientists Recreate the Face of a Denisovan Using DNA"--Smithsonian.
• "Slagheaps from ancient copper mines in southern Jordan and Israel reveal ancient Biblical kingdom of Edom was REAL, scientists claim"--Daily Mail. 
• For you electronics buffs: "Track the Movement of the Milky Way With This DIY Radio Telescope"--IEEE Spectrum.
• "Astronomers Have Found Another 21 Stars Dimming as Erratically as Tabby's Star"--Science Alert. 

       The dimming of KIC 8462852 is completely random and unpredictable - and the depth of light blocked varies. It's dipped as little 1 percent, and as much as 22 percent, and a range of depths in between. These dimming periods have varying durations, too. Whatever's causing this dimming, it's definitely not a planet.

     In addition, some wavelengths of light are blocked more than others, which, astronomers say, rules out a large, solid opaque object (such as, say, an alien megastructure - an early suggestion that has since been ruled out).

• "7 Ways to Make Your Old Phone Run Like New"--Popular Mechanics. Some of the tips are purely psychological (e.g., picking a new theme or getting a new cover), others are simple phone maintenance (e.g., getting rid of unwanted apps or getting a new battery), and one involves changing operating systems.
• "Underestimating Internal Variability Leads to Narrow Estimates of Climate System Properties"--Geophysical Research Letters. An excerpt:

Estimates of climate sensitivity remain uncertain for a number of reasons, some of which are outlined in Hegerl et al. (2000) and remain relevant today. The first reason is uncertainty in observations. Many studies estimate climate sensitivity using historical observations of climate change. Due to instrumental errors, coverage gaps, and inhomogeneity in measurement practices, there is irreducible error in the time series of climate variables. The second reason is systematic/structural errors in models. Many studies derive estimates of climate sensitivity by comparing model output to observations (e.g., Forest et al., 2008; Knutti et al., 2003; Libardoni & Forest, 2013; Olson et al., 2013). All models are approximations of reality and thus do not exactly match the climate system. The last reason is chaotic or internal variability in the climate system. In the absence of external forcing, fluctuations in the atmosphere and ocean still occur due to processes and feedbacks active in the climate system. This unforced internal variability is embedded in any climate signal, and due to its chaotic nature, represents an irreducible uncertainty.

Translation: climate models are inherently flawed and unreliable.