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Sunday, October 25, 2020

A Quick Run Around The Web (October 25, 2020)

 

VIDEO: "Proper Thumb Positions with Massad Ayoob - Master Class Ep. 17"--Wilson Combat (13 min.)

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

    They say that since you can track them with your “finger gun,” then an attacker could track you and moving doesn’t do you any good in a gunfight.

    Except that’s a myth — in real gunfights, movement does matter.

    A friend of mine is former Army special forces and a current LE trainer in the Western states.

    He has several cases where students have stepped offline, shot their attacker, and found that the wall or patrol car they were standing in front of had one or more holes in it where they were standing (before getting off the X).

    In addition, I’ve had shooters demonstrate this regularly in force-on-force training. It’s not 100%…but that has to do with the fact that our visual skills change based on stress level and movement and different people process situations differently.

    This goes way beyond “tunnel vision,” but in general, the higher the stress level of your attacker, the more movement will help you.
    [Officer] Mike Gilo hefted his fully automatic American 180 .22-caliber submachine gun, jacked the bolt to the rear, and took a bead on the car. Squeezing the trigger he unlimbered a fusillade of zippy little 40-grain lead bullets at some 1,200 rounds per minute into the vehicle’s rear window.
* * *
    Though the 12-bore failed to connect, the 180 reliably did the deed. Officer Gilo unleashed a 40-round burst that took all of two seconds. These forty little rimfire bullets chewed through the back window of the car, and the car crashed in short order.

    One of the bad guys was already toasted, his critical bits thoroughly rearranged courtesy the prodigious swarm of little 40-grain slugs. His partner in crime fled the scene but was apprehended soon thereafter sporting an unhealthy collection of small caliber bullet wounds of his own.
  • Public Service Message: "45 Colt vs 45 Long Colt – a 45 Caliber Debate Over Nothing"--Ammo Land. My theory is that people starting calling .45 Colt the "45 Long Colt" to make sure that others knew they were not talking about .45 ACP, which, back when people were looser in the terminology, was sometimes referred to as "45 Colt". 
  • Clayton Cramer reviews Craft Holster's "Grizzly" OWB holster for his S&W 629 6.5" revolver. Short take: " It is a very nice leather holster.  It is a tight molded fit, unlike the nylon holsters; do cartwheels with it, the gun isn't going anywhere.  But it still draws very smoothly." 
  • Turning to a different .45, Matt E. at The Firearm Blog has put together a series of 3 articles looking at building your own 1911 style pistol. Note that this is not a build that will save you money unless, as the author did, you are comparing it to a high-end, $2,000+ gun. The articles, in order, are:
  • "The Smith & Wesson L-Frame Story"--Revolver Guy. The original .38 Special medium frame guns used S&W's K-frame. In the late 1950s, the company started producing .357 revolvers using K-frames that had been strengthened through heat-treating processes. But because of switches in the location of the gas rings, S&W started taking off material on the underneath of the barrel to make room for the cylinder yoke to close. This weakened it enough that there started to be failures when used for .357. Thus, a slightly larger frame--the L-frame--was developed to allow the yoke to close without having to remove material from underneath the barrel.
  • "JK Armament Solvent Trap - Your DIY Form 1 Silencer Kit"--The Mag Life. Apparently Form 1's (needed for making a silencer) are being processed faster than the Form 4's (needed for transferring a silencer). The solvent trap is made of aluminum, which restricts the pressures it will work with, but should be good for most pistol calibers and .223 from a rifle length barrel, according to the article.
  • "30-30 Winchester Is A Joke" by Ron Spomer. The author goes through all the reasons why the .30-30 should be obsolete, before addressing why it is not:
I’ll tell you why: because it flat out works. Let’s face it, unless you’re hunting the wild, wild West (which is, sadly, turning into the overcrowded tame, tame West just as fast as developers can make it happen) you probably aren’t going to see a deer at 200 yards let alone shoot at one. The vast majority of whitetail hunters probably sit overlooking a runway, field, or meadow across which 100 yards is the limit. So who needs hyper velocity at those ranges? A 2.5-inch wind deflection is nothing. On-target energy of 1,121 f-p is more than sufficient to drive a deadly mushrooming 30-30 bullet ripping right through a deer’s vitals. And… (here’s the part gourmands love) you can eat right up to the hole. Well, close enough anyway. 
    • Related: "Behind the Bullet: .30-30 Winchester" by Philip Massaro, American Hunter. A look at the history, some of the cartridges being offered in this caliber, and the author's reloads. An excerpt:
The .30-30 Winchester is a simple design, easy on the shoulder (having just about half the recoil of the .30-06 Springfield) and the wallet, and very effective inside of 200 yards. Due to the design of the rifles—traditionally equipped with a tubular magazine that lines the cartridges up nose to tail—the great majority of the ammunition has been loaded with either flat or round nosed bullets, to prevent detonation within the magazine. This obviously reduces the ballistic coefficient (BC) of the bullet, and as the .30-30 starts out mild, both energy and velocity figures drop off quickly. But, as modern long-range shooting was nearly incomprehensible to the average hunter of a century ago, the .30-30 was ‘enough gun’ for those in pursuit of whitetail deer and black bear. Zeroed at 100-yards, the classic 170-grain load prints .3-inch high at 50 yards and 8.5 inches low at 200 yards; as most shots were inside 125 yards, hold-over wasn’t much of an issue.
    • Related: ".30-30 Winchester (.30 WCF )"--Terminal Ballistics Research. Probably all you will ever need to know about this cartridge and its effectiveness.
  • "Reloading Myths for Rifle Cartridges"--Shooting Times. Looking at whether you really need to load the cartridge so the bullet is as close to the lands as possible, whether you need to deeply seat a bullet to get the best velocity, and more.
  • "The Swampfox Blade – And How I Learned To Love 1X Prisms"--The Mag Life. More than just a review of the Swampfox Blade 1x prism scope, the author also notes some advantages to such devices over a basic red-dot: (i) if you lose power or the electronics expire, you still have an etched reticle to use; (ii) because of the etched reticle, you can get different types of reticles; and (iii) it works better for people suffering from astigmatism. 
  • "8 facts about gun control in the US"--DW. Not a bad overview for a German news service of the basic U.S. federal gun laws on purchase and sale of firearms. However, where it all falls apart is the contention that the "gun show loophole"--aka, private sales and transfers--undermines the intent of the laws. This is incorrect for two reasons. First, it puts the cart before the horse, so to speak. That is, by virtue of the Second Amendment and the common law at the time of the founding, the default stance was that a person is entitled to purchase, possess or sell weapons, including firearms. The federal laws are an exception to the default, and thus have typically focused on the commercial or retail sale of firearms. It is incorrect to call the default a "loophole". Second, assuming for sake of argument that the purpose of the federal laws was to make it more difficult for criminals to obtain firearms (as opposed to preventing a successful resistance to the elites), the data shows that criminals primarily obtain their firearms illegally. From The National Review (emphasis added):
    From the Department of Justice. It’s nothing earthshattering, but it’s a good update to old surveys of prison inmates.

    Among prisoners serving time for a crime during which they possessed a gun, about half got their weapons either on the underground market (43 percent) or through theft (6 percent). Meanwhile, 10 percent bought guns from a retail source, including 0.8 percent who bought them at gun shows.

    Another 11 percent of the time, someone else bought the gun for them, either as a gift or as a straw purchase (situations I wish the survey separated). Roughly 15 percent got guns from family and friends (buying, renting, trading, borrowing). And 12 percent of the time, the guns were either brought to the crime by someone else or found at the scene.
  • "The Future of Handguns: Did We Peak?" by Tamara Keel, Shooting Illustrated. A look at how we reached the point that the dominant handgun is a striker-fired, polymer framed firearms shooting 9 mm, and much of it comes down to cost. So what is the future? Keel doesn't see anything earth shattering:
For the near future though, it looks like the advances will be in peripherals: Better integration of red-dot optics, lights and lasers. There will also be applications for the serialized interchangeable chassis-type lockwork such as that found in the P320 that we haven’t yet explored. So, while we haven’t reached the “end of history” with the current crop of service-style autos, we’ve certainly hit a good, long pause.
  • "Oxygen Absorbers For 5-Gallon Bucket Food Storage"--Modern Survival Blog. The author discusses why oxygen absorbers help keep food from spoiling or being spoiled by bugs or mold, as well as tips and recommendations for using them. The key part is that absorbers are rated according to how much oxygen they absorb (listed in cubic centimetres), so you will need to know the volume of the void space remaining in your container after you have filled it. For instance, the author notes, the ubiquitous 5 gallon food storage bucket generally has a void space of 2000 cc. 
  • "How to Use a Signal Mirror in a Survival Scenario" by Jim Baird, Field & Stream.
1. Facing the sun, place the mirror next to your eye—or, if it has a sight, hold the mirror right up to your eye to peep through the hole—and then look toward the sun.

2. Stretch out your other arm in front of you and tilt your head down until you can see the reflection of the mirror on your hand.

3. Spread open two fingers to create a V and guide the reflected light between them. Keep a small portion of the reflection visible on your fingers so you know it’s there.

4. Place your target between your two spread-out fingers while angling the mirror so that the reflected light remains between them.

5. Once the directed light is fixed on your target, flash the mirror up and down three times quickly. Three represents the universal distress signal, and flashing is also more attention-grabbing than direct light.

6. In the even that both your target and the sun are not in front of you, you’ll need to angle your body as much as 90-degrees from the sun to direct the light accurately.

7. If your target is behind you while you’re facing the sun, turn around to face your target, then lay down on your back. Hold the mirror in place while still keeping your sighting hand outstretched in front of you for accuracy.
1) Unusual Action and/or Unusual Presence
2) Change Coinciding with Your Action
3) Interception or Intersection
4) Hands are Hidden
5) Preening and Patting
6) Loitering Near Choke/Transition Point
  • "4 Things I Wish I Had Done Differently When I Homeschooled" by Nicole Russell, The Federalist. The four things are: (1) prioritize character and habits first (i.e., in the low grades, K-3) over academic achievement; (2) set a strong foundation in the basics (i.e., reading, writing, and mathematics); (3) treat homeschooling like a job; and (4) don't be afraid of change or making changes.
  • "SELCO: The 4 Types of REAL Survivalists"--Organic Prepper. This is an interesting article that I recommend that you read. But, just briefly, the four types of survivors he discusses (and he is talking about specific people) are: (1) the Bad Man (a sociopath and sadist that loved the violence and power); (2) the Chameleon (a lawyer who got hold of a deactivated machine gun, and acted the role of someone that would blow away anyone that crossed him); (3) slaves and servants (basically people that have linked up with more powerful groups for protection and food--in this case, a mother and wife who became the prostitute for a criminal gang in order to feed her family); and (4) the Good Boss (in this case, a police officer that saw what was happening, loaded up on weapons, gathered a group that was loyal to him and over which he exercised strong control to keep them from becoming too vicious).
  • Well, this sucks: "Mosquitoes killing animals by draining their blood"--Bayou Renaissance Man. He quotes from an article describing a part of the aftermath of Hurricane Laura earlier this year:
    Huge swarms of mosquitoes are draining blood from and killing livestock in Louisiana after Hurricane Laura swept through the state.

    The mosquitoes, which were pushed from Louisiana swamps as a result of the storm, are draining blood from deer and cattle, as well as a few goats and horses, who become exhausted from blood loss and die, veterinarian Craig Fontenot told the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center.

    "They can’t get enough oxygen," Fontenot explained.
    Researchers found societies with governments that were reasonably responsive to their people -- governments that met the definition of good governance -- tended to last a bit longer than autocratic governments.

    However, researchers found that when good governments turned rotten, the breakup was often uglier than the collapse of autocratic governments.

* * *

     Researchers also looked at why exactly good governments fail. They found the collapse of good governments was often triggered by the rise to power of amoral leaders -- leaders who ignored the social contract and abandoned their society's ideals.

    Such betrayals often precipitated or accompanied rising inequality, concentration of political power, tax evasion, crumbling infrastructure and the decline of bureaucratic institutions -- a pattern researchers suggest can be observed in modern societies.


VIDEO: "Bugging Out"--Black Pilled (1 hr 18 min.)
A great discussion on bugging out--how, when and to where, etc.

The Current Unrest:
  • "The Police and Us" by Angelo Codevilla, American Greatness. A warning that the police serve their bosses, not the public. Key points:
    What then shall we do with and about the police? Reality imposes certain principles.

    First, trust them only insofar as you pay them, can hire and fire, or frighten them. Otherwise, realize that they will serve whomever pays them. 

    The justice system in Al Capone’s day served the Mob even though the cops and judges of the day were churchgoers and had been exposed to at least some moral scruples. Today’s justice system consists of people who know only sticks and carrots.

    Second, take a lesson from those videos of the police standing aside. They didn’t protect the mobs simply because they were so ordered. They did it also because they were physically frightened by the mob’s use of a variety of weapons against them, as well as by the prospect of lawsuits and attacks on them and their families. 

    In Louisville, a man who shot two cops in the back was charged only with reckless endangerment. Alas, the Left has shown that hurting cops tends to make them your friends. Hence, if you want respect from police who you do not control, make sure you give them lively reasons to fear you.

    Third, police yourselves. Call it self-defense groups, neighborhood protection, vigilantes, friends, anything but “militias.” But the essence is the same: rely on yourself and on people who have known each other for a long time—no infiltrators, please—united and armed to take care of themselves as they think best.

    Fourth and most important: strictly police your own attitude. 

    You are living in territory controlled by enemy tribes. You, and all like you, must assume the innocence of anyone remotely like yourself who is charged in any confrontation with those tribes and with their authorities—until proven otherwise beyond a shadow of your doubt. Take his side. In other words, you must shield others like yourself by practicing and urging “jury nullification.” 

    And, by the way, when the police—a fortiori the FBI—come to talk, you don’t know or remember anything—except that they answer to your enemies. Don’t be a good German.
     Secret Service officers are getting new laser-blocking sunglasses. LaFayette Park, that iconic center of protest, has been fenced off months before the usual Inauguration Day shut down.

    And within the White House gates, aides to President Donald Trump have held more than five dozen meetings to discuss contingency planning for the hours and days after the polls close, according to administration officials who requested anonymity to discuss the secretive plans.

    City and federal authorities across the country, anticipating the high potential for unrest in the hours and days following this year’s election, are making contingency plans for “worst-case scenarios,” particularly if there is no clear winner come November 4. That includes — in Washington, the capital — reinforcing officers with new equipment and holding training drills that ensure law enforcement is prepared to quell any violence or looting that might occur, while also protecting people’s right to protest, said a city official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. The stepped-up training schedules are in anticipation of the election, the official said.
We’ve already seen two instances where the police in Aurora, Colorado have “stood down” when facing violent felons. The first incident involved a guy with a lengthy rap sheet who was exposing himself to young girls, destroying property, and threatening harm to the residents of an apartment complex. The cops stood down twice in two days rather than taking him into custody. The more recent incident involved a child abuse suspect with multiple warrants and who was on parole, who barricaded himself inside his home with one of his children and some firearms. The cops walked away that time also and the perpetrator is still on the loose.
The organizational capacity required to build a new world is the same organizational capacity have Lefties built to pressure government. So who’s in a better position to shape the big moment when it comes?  Hell, if tomorrow civilization goes completely Mad Max: who’s got existing local networks of people who they’re used to turning out and doing stuff with on a regular basis?  Answer to both questions: not the Right.
    Molotov cocktail. This is made with a breakable container, a gas and oil mixture, and a cloth wick. To construct it, fill the container (usually a bottle) with the gas and oil mixture, and then insert the cloth wick into the container. The wick must extend both into the mixture and out of the container. Light the wick before throwing the Molotov cocktail. When the container hits a vehicle and breaks, the mixture will ignite, burning both the vehicle and the personnel around it.

    U.S. Marine Corps. MCWP 3-35 F-16,18: The Molotov cocktail (Figure F-16) is an expedient device for disabling both wheeled and tracked vehicles. It is easy to make because the materials are readily available. The results are most effective because of the close engagement in built-up areas. The objective is to ignite a flammable portion of the vehicle such as the fuel or ammunition that it is transporting. The following materials are needed to make a Molotov cocktail:
  • Bottle or other glass container
  • Gas (60 percent)
  • Oil (40 percent)
  • Rag for use as a wick.
The gas and oil are mixed thoroughly (60 percent gas to 40 percent oil). The rag is soaked with the mixture, then the mixture is placed into the bottle. The rag is then inserted in the Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain F – 17 opening of the bottle as a wick. When a target is sighted, the wick is lit and the bottle is thrown hard enough to break.

Second, the stupid analogy:

    The gasoline inside the bottle is suspended above the darker motor oil at the bottom of the bottle, much like white people in Milwaukee are given privileges which allow them to effortlessly maintain their status over black people. In this combination, they can be volatile when ignited and stay burning longer and more intensely than either one its own. This combination can be used to start fires to provide warmth, and removed from their captive bottle and allowed to permeate the world on their own, they can be used in an almost infinite number of ways to benefit society.

    The bottle itself represents the various boundaries as a result of redlining and other segregations that scar the Milwaukee landscape. Outsiders peer through the tarnished glass to witness the volatile liquid inside, just as newcomers to Milwaukee bear witness to the most segregated city in the land of the free through their own lenses. The glass is fragile, just like the racial tension has been in Milwaukee for centuries through wave after wave of immigrants seeking refuge, freedom and justice.

    The cloth wick atop the bottle represents the kindling of the fire and the patchwork torn from the patchwork quilt that truly represents the United States of America and all of its citizens. A patchwork quilt made up of all the smaller pieces of other, plainer quilts. From larger pieces of fine silk to the tattered threads hanging on for dear life, every single fiber represents the people of the United States of America, and the black threads have been disappearing into the darkness of the night of our quilt for far too long. It is time to light the way and save them. Our quilt simply does not have the same livelihood, style, flair, protection, warmth and culture without black. Without black the quilt is not complete.

    The fire, the most important part, represents the fire growing inside the hearts of people waking up to the injustices which have placed BIPOC folks at a disadvantage for centuries. The smaller fires in the hearts of many protestors who have just joined the fight to end systemic racism pale in comparison to the raging torrents of inferno blazing within the chests of organizers like Frank Nitty and Khalil Coleman, two of the most prominent and skilled protest organizers in Milwaukee.

    All of these fires are crucial to act as a catalyst for the larger event in a Molotov cocktail’s predicted life. The large and prominent flame atop the bottle, while impressive and frightening at the same time, represents just a taste of what lays ahead when the bottle bursts and a fireball eclipses the original flame, engulfing whatever it is aimed at. But without that original flame to ignite the whole combustion, the Molotov is nothing more than an extremely poisonous drink with a makeshift stopper.
    We now know that Joe Biden met directly with his son’s Chinese business partner, Jonathan Li, in a Chinese hotel lobby on a fateful trip in 2013 (a trip that allowed Hunter to spend hours with his father, the vice president, on a transoceanic flight to Beijing aboard Air Force Two). Ten days later, Hunter landed an unprecedented $1 billion private equity deal, bankrolled by the Chinese government.

    But this was not the only meeting Joe Biden had with Biden family business partners. As the New York Post reported, e-mails on Hunter Biden’s hard drive reveal that on April 16, 2015, Joe Biden met with a high-level official of a controversial Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, which had put Hunter on its board. And a recently unearthed photo shows that Vice President Biden met with Hunter’s Kazakh business associate in Washington D.C.
    A significant factor in China’s progress [in fielding a stealth fighter jet] comes as a result of the 2015 acquisition of Henniges Automotive, a Michigan company whose anti-vibration technology is used on the F-35 (stealth) fighter, by Aviation Industry Corp of China (AVIC), the state-owned entity that produces fighter jets for the Chinese military.

    Guess whose company partnered with AVIC in that acquisition? That’s right – Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz’s BHR.

    As a refresher: BHR is a Chinese venture capital firm in which Rosemont Seneca Thornton (the Biden/Heinz/Archer/Bulger partnership) owned a 30 percent stake, and which is majority-owned and controlled by the state-owned Bank of China. (Hunter Biden still owns 10 percent through his Skaneateles, LLC entity.)

    For the 2015 transaction a wholly-owned subsidiary of AVIC, AVIC Auto, partnered with BHR to acquire Henniges, with AVIC Auto owning 51 percent and BHR owning 49 percent – meaning that the Chinese government-owned military manufacturer ended up with controlling interest of Henniges.
    On Tuesday, several days after emails Cooney provided to Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer and journalist Matthew Tyrmand became public, federal agents moved him from his cell to protect him. Tyrmand, who is in contact with members of Cooney’s family, told Breitbart News that Cooney was moved from his cell in a federal prison in Oregon around 11:00 a.m. local time on Tuesday. Tyrmand said that Cooney spoke with family members multiple times on Tuesday, which he said is “much more than usual.”

    “Bevan could sense that things had changed with the rise in visibility of his story,” Tyrmand said.

    Cooney’s family stressed to Tyrmand they are “extremely concerned given the nervousness gleaned from Bevan’s reaction this morning and they would appreciate a sign from the powers that be that Bevan is in protective custody.” It is unclear where Cooney has been moved to, and in whose custody he currently is.
    In a stunning development, a former Chief Science Officer for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says "there is no science to suggest a second wave should happen." The "Big Pharma" insider asserts that false positive results from inherently unreliable COVID tests are being used to manufacture a "second wave" based on "new cases."

    Dr. Mike Yeadon, a former Vice President and Chief Science Officer for Pfizer for 16 years, says that half or even "almost all" of tests for COVID are false positives. Dr. Yeadon also argues that the threshold for herd immunity may be much lower than previously thought, and may have been reached in many countries already.

Also:

Even more significantly, even if all positives were to be correct, Dr. Yeadon said that given the "shape" of all important indicators in a worldwide pandemic, such as hospitalizations, ICU utilization, and deaths, "the pandemic is fundamentally over."
    There is, however, ample evidence that the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. has been corrupted in order to inflate the totals. CDC data shows almost no flu deaths in 2020, something that is simply not credible. More likely the totals of COVID-19 deaths are a combination of COVID-19 and flu deaths, with all the deaths assigned to the coronavirus because hospitals get more government money by doing so.

    This combination suggests that all told this epidemic is essentially comparable to a normal flu season. The 2020 winter season was simply one in which we were hit with two respiratory diseases, one old and one new, and the two combined to make that season worse than normal.

VIDEO: "Why Was 536 A.D The Worst Year In History?"--Timeline (50 min.)

Miscellany:
    Currently 30 million acres of American farmland is owned by foreign investors or fully 2.2 percent of all American farmland. For context, that’s an area roughly the size of Mississippi or Pennsylvania These are effectively absentee landlords who own some of the best real estate in the United States.

    For its part, China owned 191,000 acres worth $1.9 billion as of 2019. This might not sound like a lot, but Chinese ownership of American farmland has exploded dramatically over the last decade. Indeed, there has been a tenfold expansion of Chinese ownership of farmland in the United States in less than a decade. 

    Six states — Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota and Oklahoma — currently ban foreign ownership of farmland. 

    Massive Chinese investment in American farmland is troubling for one very obvious reason: It puts the food security of the nation in the hands of a hostile foreign power. But there is also the social cost of allowing foreign buyers who have effectively unlimited resources to compete on the real estate market with smaller domestic buyers.

    It is understandable if no one reading this has any tears to shed for Big Aggie, but the real victims of this are smaller landholders. For those concerned about environmental issues, ask yourself who is more likely to practice good stewardship of the land — American farmers or Chinese bureaucrats thousands of miles away. 

    Catholicism and homosexuality have long had a troubled relationship. In 1986, when the Church was under the stewardship of the popular but deeply conservative Polish John Paul II, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith described homosexuality as ‘a strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil... marriage is holy while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law’.

    For traditionalists, little has changed since that hardline edict.

    In 2003, the Congregation updated its teaching on whether there should be legal recognition for gay people, saying same-sex marriage was ‘deviant’.

    The document added: ‘Respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.’

    As for gay men and women adopting children, the document described this simply as ‘violence’ against children.

    Those harsh words were drafted by German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who, two years later, became Pope Benedict XVI.

Pierce, though, reveals himself as one demanding the right to sin without consequence, concluding his column:

The real test for gay Catholics such as me will be if Pope Francis one day permits civil partnerships to be blessed in church. That might drive traditionalists from the faith — but we can do without their hatred for ‘deviants’ who simply wish to have our loving relationships recognised by the Church to which we belong.

The discovery underscores the diversity of African groups that inhabited the continent before the Bantus began to herd livestock in the grassy highlands of western Central Africa. The Bantus made pottery and forged iron, and their burgeoning populations rapidly displaced hunter-gatherers across Africa. Analyzing DNA from a time before this expansion offers “a glimpse of a human landscape that is profoundly different than today,” Reich says.
    Using whole-genome data from present-day West Africans, scientists have found a small portion of genetic material that appears to come from this mysterious lineage, which is thought to have split off from the human family tree even before Neanderthals.

    Today, it's thought (although still being debated) that anatomically modern humans originated in Africa, and that once these populations migrated to Europe and Asia, they interbred with closely-related species like Neanderthals and Denosovans.

    As such, modern West Africans, like populations in Yoruba and Mende, do not possess genes from either of these ancient species, but that doesn't mean there was no intermixing. In fact, recent evidence suggests the genetic past of West Africans may contain a similarly juicy narrative.
According to standard anatomy textbooks, the body has just three major sets of salivary glands: one under the tongue, another below the jaw, and the third near the ears. This potential fourth pair sits near where the nasal cavity meets the throat. Researchers noticed these unfamiliar structures while looking through the computerized tomography scans of 100 patients diagnosed with prostate or urethral gland cancer. They then examined tissues from two cadavers, and found that the structures were similar to salivary glands located underneath the tongue, they reported last month in Radiotherapy and Oncology. More research is needed to conclude whether these mysterious structures are newly discovered organs, or one of the hundreds of minor salivary glands in the mouth and throat. If the finding is confirmed, it would be the first discovery of salivary glands in about 300 years.
DNA variation in a gene called ROBO1 is associated with early anatomical differences in a brain region that plays a key role in quantity representation, potentially explaining how genetic variability might shape mathematical performance in children, according to a study published October 22nd in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Michael Skeide of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and colleagues. Specifically, the authors found that genetic variants of ROBO1 in young children are associated with grey matter volume in the right parietal cortex, which in turn predicts mathematical test scores in second grade.
    The challenging technology was developed to control crucial issues with high energy solid-state lasers: size, weight and power, and the problem of dissipating waste heat that could disrupt laser operation and beam quality. General Atomics "had a couple of completely new ideas, including a liquid laser. They were considered completely crazy at the time, but DARPA funded us," said company vice president Mike Perry in a 2016 interview. Liquid lasers are similar to solid-state lasers, but they use a cooling liquid that flows through channels integrated into the solid-state laser material. A crucial trick was ensuring that the cooling liquid has a refractive index exactly the same as that of the solid laser material. A perfect match of the liquid and solid could avoid any refraction or reflection at the boundary between them. Avoiding reflection or refraction in the the cooling liquid also required making the fluid flow smoothly through the channels to prevent turbulence.

    The system promised to be both compact and comparatively lightweight, just what DARPA wanted to fit a 150-kW laser into a fighter jet. The goal was a device that weighed only 750 kilograms, or just 5 kg/kW of output. The project that went through multiple development stages of testing that lasted a decade. In 2015, General Atomic delivered the HELLADS, the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System, rated as 150-kW class, to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for live fire tests against military targets.  A press release issued at the time boasted the laser held "the world's record for the highest laser output power of any electrically powered laser." At the time, General Atomics described it as a modular laser weapon weighing in at four kilograms per kilowatt.
    During the summer disturbances in Washington, D.C., a top local military police officer asked the D.C. National Guard about deploying two military systems that seem to come out of science fiction. One, the Active Denial System (ADS), makes the target’s skin feel like it’s on fire. The other, called the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), directs intense sound in a narrow cone. The sound is so clear and so powerful that it was nicknamed “the voice of God.” I encountered both systems, one at Quantico, Virginia, the other in Falluja, Iraq. Here’s what I saw.

    The ADS is the most dramatic. It looks like a square dish mounted on a heavy truck and directs millimeter waves at targets. This directed energy makes the skin feel like it’s on fire. The feeling is so intense that you can’t withstand it. (Trust me on this; I felt it.) That drives targets to move away. Once out of the direct path of the beam, the effect ends. Here’s a video for those wanting to see the system in action.

    ADS is technically not a “heat ray” because it uses millimeter waves, not infrared waves. That may seem like a minor difference, of interest only to physicists, but it is crucially important to the target. Heat rays (from the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum) leave blistering (i.e., sunburn) that takes days to heal. The millimeter wave effect stops as soon as the target gets out of the way and does not leave a residual injury.

    The LRAD is a smaller dish, mounted on a stand or light vehicle, that focuses sound in a narrow cone. The sound is very intense and clear, not like the attenuated sound of a bullhorn. In Iraq, the Marines used the system to warn civilians who were getting too close to Marine positions. The Marines found that civilians sometimes ignored all warnings―flags, flares, warning shots―and got shot. The LRAD produces sound so forceful that it could not be ignored. It got the attention of drivers even if they were listening to the radio or dealing with screaming kids in the backseat.

    After two decades of crippling limitations, Brazilian classical pianist João Carlos Martins has spent 2020 getting back to grips with his beloved Bach after being fitted with a pair of specially designed bionic gloves at the end of last year.

    Moments after taking to the keys to play the “Adagio” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Keyboard Concerto in D minor (which takes its melody from Alessandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in the same key), the 80-year-old maestro was overcome with emotion, as captured in a now-viral video posted on his Instagram.

    Considered one of the great interpreters of Bach’s music, the pianist and conductor had retired last March after two-dozen surgeries to combat pain from a degenerative disease and a series of accidents, according to the Associated Press. His dexterity issues had forced him to work mostly as a conductor since the early 2000s.

    “After I lost my tools, my hands, and couldn’t play the piano, it was as if there was a corpse inside my chest,” Martins told the outlet.

    Created by the industrial designer Ubiratan Bizarro Costa using exoskeleton technology often applied for spinal injuries, the “magic” gloves “bump Martins’ fingers upward after they depress the keys.”

    He now hopes to play Carnegie Hall — for the first time in 60 years — in 2021, The Times reported.
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2 comments:

  1. John WilderOctober 25, 2020 at 7:37 PM

    Of course, commies waxing poetic about the Molotov Cocktail is funny - since it was developed to fight them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DocentOctober 26, 2020 at 10:15 AM

      Since Marxists don't study history, the irony would be completely lost on them.

      Delete

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