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Wednesday, June 23, 2021

The Docent's Memo (6/23/2021)

VIDEO: "Battle Belt Setup"--ANR Design LLC (7 min.)
They're using the MOLLE 1.75″ Double Belt Rig from Blue Alpha.

Firearms/Shooting/Self-Defense:

  • Battle belts: I had a friend and long time reader recently email me about his ideas for a battle belt setup. He was looking for something for when he wanted to be better armed than just a pistol, but lower profile (and I assume weight) than a fully kitted out chest harness/load bearing rig. What he had come up with was a battle belt with just the basics for handgun, rifle and a less lethal option. For pouches, he was trying out a Condor GEN2 Double Kangaroo Magazine Pouch on one side with two AR magazines and one pistol magazine and a can of pepper spray (in one of the pistol mag pouches) to provide a less-than-lethal option. Obviously, his handgun holster is on his other side. He related that he had even tried it out with a few different cover garments while driving, hiking, eating out, grocery shopping, even attending a BBQ, and no one had noticed it. Using a Redi-Mag system with his AR, that gave him four (4) full AR magazines if needed (one loaded in the weapon, one in the Redi-Mag, and two in the pouches). It sounds like a pretty good, bare-bones system to me.
    I've also been toying around with some sort of minimalist system, but haven't made it as far as my friend. I had been looking possibly at a duty belt system, but had started to gravitate back toward using my Hillpeople Gear Kit Bag with the PALS system on it. I could mount a double kangaroo magazine pouch like my friend and maybe throw on a tourniquet or pouch for a flashlight (e.g., my Olight Freyr), or mount a Condor GEN2 Triple Kangaroo Magazine Pouch (I have one of these I had purchased for a plate carrier and it fits just fine on the kit bag). The handgun would obviously go inside the kit bag. The downside is that it is not concealable like the belt system described above. 

    Anyone else have ideas or suggestions that they want to share? 

  • "The Quest to Find the Perfect Carry Gun" by Sheriff Jim Wilson, Shooting Illustrated. Wilson mentions how a man he knows is methodically testing handguns for concealed carry by using three drills that cover the challenges that the armed citizen is most likely to have and don't require a lot of ammunition. Although the specific drills are not disclosed, Wilson relates that "One drill focuses on speed, one on accuracy and the last on long-range performance—out to 50 yards."
  • "Initial Impressions-.22 Ruger LCP II"--Active Response Training. Greg Ellifritz purchased this because he has the LCP II in .380, but doesn't like the excessive recoil and limited 6+1 capacity of that pistol. After the first magazine, the weapon fired flawlessly through another 70 rounds with a variety of .22 ammunition. With a four round extension on the magazines, he will be able to carry 15 rounds on-board. 
  • "2 New 1,000 Yard Records"--Loose Rounds. The article reports that Charles Greer set two new World Records in NBRSA 1,000 Yard Heavy Gun: (1) a perfect 10-shot single target score of 100-10X; and (2) the best single target group--a 10 shot group size of 2.6566-inches. 
  • "Exploring the Ideal Zero for 22LR Precision Rifles"--Everyday Marksman. As you probably know, a hundred yard or so zero works well for center-fire rifles because at all ranges you will never have to under-hold to strike the target--all adjustments (or holdovers) will be above or up. The author of this article tried to find a similarly useful zero for the .22 LR and determined that it was about 35 yards. "This places the zero at the peak of the ballistic arc so that you will only ever have to dial the turret, or hold over, in one direction- just as we would do it with a full size centerfire rifle."
  • "Aiming A Defensive Handgun, Is There One Right Way?" by Richard A. Mann, Gun Digest. A look at obtaining a precision sight picture (best for accuracy), flash sight picture (focusing on the front sight), and target focus shooting, gun indexing, and hip (aka, retention) shooting. An excerpt:
    Which is best? What might surprise you is that none of these techniques are better than the other. They’re all equally important, because from a tactical standpoint they should all be applied based on the situation. If you’re three yards from the target and take the time to establish a precision sight picture, you might get your gun taken away from you or pull the trigger too late to save your life. Conversely, if you’re at 15 yards and try to shoot from the retention position, you could incapacitate your adversary with laughter because he’ll be cackling at your inability to hit anything. The key is to know your limitations with each technique and apply them accordingly.
 
    An experienced shooter will move between these techniques subconsciously as the situation dictates. Practice has taught them what they need to see or feel given the range, target size, and perceived available time. If you’re five yards from a threat and you think you need to point shoot in order to incapacitate the threat before it reaches or shoots you, that’s a noble goal. However, the reality might be that you must shoot with a target focus or at least a flash sight picture in order to get the hits you need as soon as they’re needed.

    To try to put some numbers to this and after the expenditure of a lot of ammunition, I found that I could keep five shots inside a 5-inch circle at 25 yards using the precision sight picture. Problem was, it took me about 15 seconds to do it. I also found that between one and three yards I could shoot from the retention position and keep five shots inside a 5-inch circle—about half the time—in less than 2.5 seconds.

    With the gun indexing method, most of the time I could keep five shots inside a 5-inch circle out to about four yards and within about 3 seconds. By using the flash sight picture, I could stretch that distance to about 12 yards, but it took me about 5 seconds at that distance. As for the target focus technique, for me it worked about as well as the flash sight picture; however, I had to switch to a different handgun with a very bold XS Sights’ Big Dot Sight for the best results.

    Interestingly, with all the techniques where the handgun was being fired out in front of my face, I sometimes found I’d use multiple techniques for individual shots within the five-shot string. This was possible and happened because of conditioning/practice. My brain recognized when the gun was indexed properly, when the front sight was positioned properly, and when I had the correct flash or even precision sight picture, and it made my finger pull the trigger.


VIDEO: "Dark Prepper Mindset: Evil Library"--Prepper Logic (5 min.)
The host of this video discusses the ethics and cautions about having an "evil library"--that is, books (whether ebooks or physical copies) on subjects that you hope you never need but want to have just in case. The host suggests that the contents of such a library could be viewed as one of terrorist material; based on the images in the video, he appears to be thinking primarily of books on explosives. If you have visited my E-Book Resources page, you know that there are links included to books on explosives. Unlike the host of the foregoing video, I don't see such books as "evil." For one thing, explosives play an important role in mining and construction. Some types of emergency work might require explosives (e.g., snuffing out an oil well that is on fire or breaching a ship hull to reach survivors). And, of course, explosives are widely used for military purposes.

Prepping/Survival:
  • "Desert-Tested Gear That Worked Really Well On Arizona Trek"--Survival Common Sense. The author especially liked a broad-rimmed wool-felt hat, a Beretta long-sleeved shirt, a pair of Danner Incursions boots, and Buffalo Wool socks. Some nice photographs as well.
  • "SHTF Survival in the Mountains: What You Need to Know"--Modern Survival Online. Short take: "Sometimes, the mountains served as the backdrop of a valiant last stand and other times it served as a sanctuary, proof against all harm. More often, it turns out that the mountains themselves are an even bigger danger than what the refugees were originally fleeing from." 
  • "BOB Needed – Chemical Fire Evacuation"--Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You. This is about the chemical fire in an Illinois town that I discussed this past week and discusses in greater detail why a bug-out-bag, communications, and a plan were needed for this scenario. Per this article, everyone within a 2 mile radius of the fire was told to evacuate, with residents directed to shelter at a local school. The author writes:
    I don’t know about you good people, but heading over to a community shelter full of a bunch of people (and pets) who are highly stressed out, likely upset, and just “hanging out while the government does whatever it is it’s going to do” sure doesn’t sound like anything I’m interested in doing.

    A far better idea would be to go to your pre-planned distant (but still relatively local) rally point where you could let things at home play out without being involved with a big crowd of upset, unsettled people.
    Hurricane season began June 1 and runs through November. If you do nothing else to prepare for a hurricane evacuation, make sure you have some form of transportation away from coastal counties if a hurricane is headed our way.

    For some people that means getting on the local health department's hurricane registry. Not everyone is eligible, but for those who are it can be a literal lifesaver.  

    County health departments operate a hurricane registry for residents with certain healthcare conditions who may need transportation or medical assistance and have no resources such as family members, neighbors, or friends to help them evacuate if a hurricane is threatening.

The article also adds: "To apply for the registry, coastal residents can call toll-free, 1-833-CHD-REGISTER (1-833-243-7344) and follow the phone prompts to be connected to their local county health department."

    • Related: "Pets need a hurricane plan, too. Here's a check-list for your furry friend in a storm"--Savannah Morning News (h/t KA9OFF). Tips include: (1) don't lose your pet, and make sure the pet has some form of identification and keep a photograph of the pet with you; (2) find a safe place to go in advance; and (3) make a pet evacuation kit. Suggested items for the kit include:
      • Extra collars and tags, harnesses and leashes (4 to 6 feet) for all pets.
      • Muzzles for aggressive dogs.
      • A manual can opener.
      • Food and water containers for each pet.
      • Fresh food and water for each pet (extra pet food to avoid diet changes).
      • Litter or shredded paper.
      • Paper towels, plastic bags & disinfectant for waste cleanup.
      • Pet first aid kit.
      • Copies of your pet’s medical and vaccination records. Dogs must have proof of vaccinations for rabies, DHLP, Bordetella and corona. Cats require proof of current vaccinations for rabies, feline leukemia, and FVRCP.
      • If your pet is on medication, ask your veterinarian about an extra supply of medication, or keep a copy of the prescription in your kit.
      • Those pet and pet/owner photos.
      • Identification tags.
      • Pet comfort items: towels, blankets, toys.
  • "Earth has a pulse! Our planet has a 'heartbeat' of geological activity every 27.5 MILLION YEARS - but scientists have no idea what causes it"--Daily Mail.  "Pulse" is a horrible word to use. What the researchers discovered is that looking back over the past 260 million years Earth has a recurrent cycle of clusters of major geologic catastrophes that occur every 27.5 million years. No explanation is known, although Ben Davidson of Suspicious Observers noted in a video a few days ago that it might be related to the solar system's orbit around the galaxy, such as passing through the spiral arms. One complete orbit of the galaxy takes our solar system approximately 225 to 250 million years.
    • One polar shift verified: "Earth tipped over on its side 84 million years ago and then righted itself, new study finds"--Business Insider. From the article:
        According to a new study, Earth tilted by 12 degrees about 84 million years ago. 

        "A 12-degree tilt of the Earth could affect latitude that same amount," Sarah Slotznick, a geobiologist at Dartmouth College and co-author of the new study, told Insider.

        It would approximately move New York City to where Tampa, Florida, is right now, she added.

    * * *
        The researchers found that, between 86 and 79 million years ago, the crust and mantle had rotated around Earth's outer core and back again — causing the entire planet to tilt and then right itself like a roly-poly toy.

    This would have been about 3 of those 27.5 million year cycles ago.


    VIDEO: "Entire Portland riot squad resigns after officer's indictment"--Fox News (5 min.)
    The thin blue line is crumbling.

    The Coming Civil War:

    While Democrats and their media complain about the electoral college and the composition of the Senate, the nation and its states are largely ruled by a handful of metropolitan areas. The wealth that buys and sells elections nationwide mostly flows out of New York and California, and, more specifically, out of New York City and Silicon Valley. Geographic regions of less than 1,000 square miles in total rule a nation of 3.8 million square miles with an economic fist.

    • "Coming Race Crack-Up?" by Rod Dreher, American Conservative. Dreher warns that the Left's push of critical race theory (CRT) is leading to growth among white supremacists groups. This isn't a bug, but a feature. Federal (i.e., leftist) law enforcement has been crowing about white supremacist groups being the number one terror threat for years even as they ignored the growth of violent leftist rhetoric and groups. Unfortunately for them, the demand for white supremacists has far exceeded the supply, which is why so many highly publicized hate crimes turn out to either be blacks faking a hate crime, or nothing-burgers like the "nooses" found to pull down doors or at the end of cables dangling from cranes. A backlash against CRT might actually produce the "extremists" for whom they have been searching.
    • "Chicago Alderman Says Gangs Are Responsible For Chicago Problems, Not Racism, As Mayor Lori Lightfoot Claimed" by Ashe Schow, The Daily Wire.
        Lightfoot on Thursday blamed “systemic racism” for the hardships minority residents face in the city, pledging to use millions of dollars in grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for combatting alleged systemic racism, which she called a “public health crisis.”

        “When we think about racism, many of us think about it in visible and audible forms, but the reality is the insidious nature of systemic racism has other impacts that are every bit as deep and harmful, but often ones that we can’t see, like the impacts on the psyche and other impacts on our bodies that are just as, if not more deadly,” Lightfoot said, as The Daily Wire previously reported.

        Alderman Raymond Lopez of Chicago’s 15th Ward, however, says gang violence is to blame for the problems faced by minority residents.

        “Generational gang life isn’t just something that’s encouraged. It’s almost revered in some neighborhoods,” Lopez told the Washington Examiner. “If you really want to get to what is at the heart of a lot of this, it is gangs, and it is the borderline collapse of the family unit in many of our neighborhoods … [Lightfoot] has avoided calling out gangs in our community as a source of violence in our city.”
        Portland’s entire Rapid Response Team, cops who volunteer for riot control duty, voted unanimously to resign on Wednesday, effectively leaving the city in the hands of antifa. The riot cops’ decision follows the criminal indictment of one of their own for assault, stemming from a riot in August 2020, a police source told The Post Millennial.

        On the night of August 18, 2020, antifa skirts threw a Molotov cocktail firebomb into the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department Headquarters as the Rapid Response Team struggled to contain the riot. Rapid Response Officer Budworth hit a rioter from behind with a baton, as seen in a video with no context whatsoever.

        In a statement released after the indictment, District Attorney Mike Schmidt said, “In this case, we allege that no legal justification existed for Officer Budworth’s deployment of force, and that the deployment of force was legally excessive under the circumstances.”

        “Now that the riot team is no more, we have no clue what’s going to happen. We don’t have enough patrol officers to be pulled from the road to handle huge crowds,” a Portland police officer told The Post Millennial. “We are only backups with no gear like the riot team has.”

        “So, what typically happens, is the riot team gets called out to be prepared for a huge protest. Then patrol officers from all three precincts are on standby which gets activated when the protest starts. This means all patrol calls go to ‘priority calls only,’ basically only active assaults, shootings, and person crimes only get responded to. All other calls hold indefinitely until the protest is over or the next day,” sources told The Post Millennial.
    It's no wonder she still uses a mask. Babes weep at her approach while
    women cry out, "Dear God! What is that thing!" 
        We were told the FBI did not use spies to infiltrate the Trump campaign. They did. We were told the FBI didn’t ambush and frame former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn. They did.

        We were told the FBI would not mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They did. We were told the FBI wouldn’t doctor official reports or correspondence. They did. We were told the FBI would never use a sketchy Russian national to bolster the collusion case against Trump. They did.

        Sadly, the FBI is one of the least trustworthy agencies in the federal government—and that’s saying a lot. The stench of Jim Comey’s deceitful reign has irrevocably tarnished the reputation of the FBI for tens of millions of Americans. 

        The similarities between Russiagate and the Capitol “attack” are becoming increasingly clear. The initial narrative about what happened that day has steadily crumbled over the past five months.

        We were told Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the line of duty. He wasn’t. In fact, the FBI itself changed its story a few times about its “investigation” into his death. Sicknick died of natural causes, not at the hands of fire extinguisher-wielding Trump supporters or as the result of a reaction to chemical spray.

        We are told anywhere from five to seven people, including Sicknick, died as a result of the chaos that day. In fact, only one person, Ashli Babbitt, died by homicide that day. We were told it was an “armed” insurrection. It wasn’t. We were told rioters caused $30 million in damages to the Capitol building. They didn’t.

        We were told Capitol Police didn’t let protesters into the building. They did.

        Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s Justice Department, working in tandem with the FBI, is prosecuting roughly 500 Americans in connection with January 6, many for misdemeanors such as trespassing or disorderly conduct. Prosecutors continue to ask the court to keep defendants behind bars awaiting delayed trials; dozens languish in solitary confinement conditions in a D.C. jail.

        For years, the FBI has made no secret of its contempt for Americans on the Right, particularly supporters of the president whom the agency attempted to destroy. Suspecting their integral role in what happened on January 6 isn’t conspiratorial; it’s essential.
        Here’s the bottom line. You’re not crazy to want to know about the role of federal informants in Jan. 6, for three main reasons:
    1. This sort of infiltration has been routine in right-wing groups for decades, and it’s also routine for informants to goad other participants into more extreme acts.
    2. There is considerable evidence that informants played key roles in these groups, including as leaders in some of the more extreme ones.
    3. Loads of video and electronic evidence is being withheld from the public.

    VIDEO: "Tucker: Why did they lie to us for so long"--Fox News (12 min.)
    I know that I linked to this a couple weeks ago, but if you haven't watched it, you should since it discusses what has been learned about the coverup regarding a lab source for Covid-19. This is another great example of the secret combinations that we were warned about in the Last Days.

    COVID News:
        Referring the matter to the WHO was tantamount to inviting China to reveal what it knew about the virus’s origins at its own convenience. That’s not looking into the matter “carefully.” A little more than a month later, the now-infamous letter in The Lancet organized by Peter Daszak, whose nonprofit funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, made the case that the lab-leak hypothesis was a conspiracy theory and an insult to the noble scientists in China working hard to contain the virus. Ten days after The Lancet letter was published, the highly influential study co-authored by virologist Kristian Andersen appeared in Nature magazine arguing that the virus’s genome makes clear “that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.” That finding plus the Lancet letter all but ended the debate among scientists over a lab leak for the next 14 months.

        Andersen was on the February 1, 2020 call with Fauci. Was Daszak? It’d be nice to know in light of his conflict of interest, which went unrevealed in the Lancet letter. As it is, at least one expert suspects that the scientific consensus was set during that conference call that the lab-leak theory was kooky:

        “A small group of scientists, and a larger group of science journalists, established and enforced the false narrative that scientific evidence supported natural spillover, and (also) the false narrative that this was the scientific consensus,” said Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biosafety expert at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

        There were other views out there, they just weren’t given much coverage as being credible.

        “The February 1 telecon,” Ebright said, “appears to have played an important – probably crucial – role in establishing and enforcing that false narrative.”
    Cells contain machinery that duplicates DNA into a new set that goes into a newly formed cell. That same class of machines, called polymerases, also build RNA messages, which are like notes copied from the central DNA repository of recipes, so they can be read more efficiently into proteins. But polymerases were thought to only work in one direction DNA into DNA or RNA. This prevents RNA messages from being rewritten back into the master recipe book of genomic DNA. Now, Thomas Jefferson University researchers provide the first evidence that RNA segments can be written back into DNA, which potentially challenges the central dogma in biology and could have wide implications affecting many fields of biology.


    VIDEO: "The Giant 2021 Statue - End Time Technology Coming to a City Near You"--Nelson Walters (11 min). Twenty one of these are supposed to be built in cities around the world. The concern, of course, is that it would easily provide the means for the Anti-Christ to create an image that could speak (Rev. 13:15).

    Miscellany:
        The 45-square-mile Maria Island was once a safe space for the pocket-sized little penguin species. The corner blip of land was free of the menaces the birds face elsewhere and proved a safe home for the creatures, which grow to be just two pounds. Just a decade ago, some 3,000 breeding pairs of little penguins thrived there, the Guardian reported.

        Then, in response to an outbreak of a deadly facial tumor disease among Tasmanian devils, 28 of the marsupials were released on the island between 2012 and 2013. Since then, the face tumor disease’s spread has slowed and the devils’ ranks have grown to approximately 100.

        But all of that comes at the expense of the little penguins, as there are no longer any on the island.
        It is among the most common claims of skeptics who reject the literal resurrection of Jesus. It was all made up, they argue, many decades later by church leaders who relied upon unverified rumors, their imaginations, and pagan myths to invent what we know today as the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

        In fact, as philosopher Gary Habermas explains in his recently published “Evidence for the Historical Jesus,” it was not decades after Jesus’ death, but weeks following the crucifixion when the basic claims of the Gospel, including especially the resurrection, were expressed as articles of faith (no pun intended) among the growing movement of Christians.

        Habermas points to the timeline of events, as evidenced by New Testament passages, especially I Corinthians 15,  that most critics and believing scholars agree were written by Paul around 55 AD, to remind his readers what he had told them four years before.

    By at

    2 comments:

    1. AnonymousJune 23, 2021 at 4:35 PM

      Re: "regenerate body parts" When do human trials begin?

      ReplyDelete
      Replies
      1. DocentJune 24, 2021 at 9:53 AM

        I'm sure the Chinese will be on this soon enough. Be interesting if it got out of control, so you had people with 4 or 5 legs, a couple heads, etc.

        Delete

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    Ragnorok Part XIV -- Escalation

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