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Monday, January 31, 2022

The Docent's Memo (Jan. 31, 2022)

 

VIDEO: "10 Most Overrated CCW Pistol Features"--HR Funk (25 min.)
A look at features offered on concealed carry pistols that are given far too much weight or emphasis.

Firearms/Shooting/Self-Defense:

  • Be sure to check out Greg Ellifritz's most recent Weekend Knowledge Dump.
  • "12 Gauge Paper Cartridges for the Diablo NO FFL Shotgun Pistol"--Guns America. If you don't know, the Diablo 12-gauge pistol is a double barrel muzzleloading firearm available in barrel lengths of 6 or 8 inches. As a muzzleloader, it does not constitute a short barreled shotgun under the NFA. As a muzzleloader, it is slow to reload. Back when muzzleloaders were the primary military weapons, soldiers made use of a paper cartridge that contained a pre-measured amount of powder and the bullet to make reloading faster. I've read that the typical soldier was expected to be able to load and fire in no more than 15 seconds.
  • I don't know about your neck of the woods, but here in the Boise, Idaho, area, primers--if you can find them--are running $200 to $250 per box of 1000. And with Olin and Vista Outdoors focusing on providing primers for production of ammunition, there seems no end to the shortage. But another player may be entering the market. The Truth About Guns reports that Expansion Industries purchased the old Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant located 12 miles west of Texarkana, Texas, with plans to use the facility to produce primers. According to the article, Expansion Industries has already invested $100 million in the project.
  • Some Shot Show 2022 high-lights: Just a list of new firearms and products that I thought was interesting:
    • Probably the most interesting new firearm in my mind was the updated Hi-Power released by Fabrique Nationale. While the outward styling of the gun is similar to the Browning Hi-Power, the design has been updated including larger controls, a modern barrel lockup, an improved trigger design, and a new 17-round magazine. See also here. What I would be interested to know is whether this design was on the drawing board when FN dropped the Browning HP from its lineup, or if it was a response to the renewed interest in the Browning HP including products from Springfield and a couple Turkish manufacturers.
    • "New .375 Bishop Short Magnum Cartridge"--The Firearm Blog. Back in 2019, Bishop Ammunition and Firearms released a cartridge called the .475 Bishop Short Magnum intended as a dangerous game cartridge for use in the AR 10 platform. It was designed to shoot a 390 grain bullet at 2,500 fps. This year, they necked down the cartridge to shoot a 235-grain .375-caliber bullets at a muzzle velocity of 2950 fps generating 4542 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. By comparison, "[t]he .308 Win. can nudge a 200-grain bullet [about as heavy as you could expect to use] to about 2,400 fps and generate muzzle energy of about 2,550 ft lbs." A more valid comparison might be the .338 Winchester Magnum, which will fire a 225 gr bullet at 2,800 ft/s to produce 3,918 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. This new cartridge is also comparable to lighter bullet loads in the .375 H&H Magnum. Thus, it would be usable for anything you might encounter in North America as well as most African big game, although the bullet is too light for the thick skinned game animals. The issue is going to be cost: no price is listed as to the .375 Bishop, but the .475 Bishop was retailing at about $9 per round when it was first released.
    • "An AR-15 Rifles For The Kiddos From WEE1 Tactical"--The Truth About Guns. This is a scaled down .22 LR version of the AR rifle for introducing kids to shooting. Per the article, "The JR-15 weighs under 2.5 lbs, has a unique safety that gives parents some extra control over the rifle, and has magazines available in 1-, 5-, and 10-round capacities." That is light enough for a pack gun.
    • "New CETME L Options From MarColMar"--The Firearm Blog. As a bit of a background, the Spanish CETME C was the first successful standard issue military rifle employing a roller-delayed blowback action. It's design was licensed to HK and begat a long line of various roller-delayed actions including the G-3 and the MP-5. The CETME C was in .308, however, and so when Spain transitioned to 5.56 NATO, it developed a new design which was the CETME L. MarColMar uses CETME L parts kits to produce semi-auto CETME L rifles for sale in the U.S. There new offerings include short barrel versions as well as versions shooting .300 BLK. 
    • "The 44 Auto Mag Makes an Appearance at Range Day"--The Firearm Blog. This is probably a firearm that I will never get but I like the looks of it. The manufacturer, Auto Mag, has spent 6 years working out the bugs and refining the design to make it reliable, and it should be going on sale later this year. No word on price.
    • Seems like a lot of new thermal and nightvision products were showcased. For instance, EOTech released a line of thermal and night vision devices (but if you have to ask how much they cost, you can't afford them). A lower cost alternative for the prepper or hunter might be the ATN ODIN LT Series Thermal Monocular which, while not inexpensive, still come in under $2000. 
    • Holosun showed off their flush mounted pistol red-dot sights. They are "flush" because they don't need the adapter plate, but the base sits down into where the adapter plate normally fits. Holosun will be making them for more than just Glock pistols (the article lists some of the other models available). One of the benefits to sitting lower is that you don't need to purchase taller iron sights. But, as the article notes:

In order to perform this small bit of magic, Holosun had to make certain compromises. The first was to eliminate a removable battery entirely. The SCS has an onboard rechargeable battery that is charged by the solar panel. According to Holosun the SCS will have a 20k hour battery life. If the battery needs to be replaced you can send it back to Holosun.

VIDEO: "IRR Camouflage explained - Basic infrared knowlegde [sic]"--ripperkon (6 min.)

Prepping/Survival:

    Last week our power went down without warning. I was working at home as usual when the radio went off and security alarms around the neighbourhood started shrieking. After the WiFi dropped I finally took notice.

    Power cuts happen infrequently where I live, the power usually comes back on within an hour and life resumes. But last week was different. The previous day I’d started listening to the audiobook ‘Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath’ by former ABC news anchor, Ted Koppel, and the outage found me in a twitchy mood.

    For a few moments my imagination ran away with me. I wondered if it was down to something innocuous (as usual) or whether instead there’d been a catastrophic cyber attack on our nation’s power grid.

    Within three hours the electricity came back on. It had been due to the failing of a high-voltage line which had taken out power to 3,000 homes in the area.

    But it could have been hackers. Really it could.

After some justification for why we are all preppers (at least those of us that try and plan for the future), the author continues:

     I’ve come to believe that preparing for the unforeseen isn’t just a choice, but a responsibility. It’s one that I’ll be taking more seriously in future.

    Having lived through the global pandemic that dominated 2020, is it really possible, sensible or defensible to rely on life proceeding as it always has done?

    I couldn’t have foreseen a world where I’d routinely wear a face mask into a supermarket or where I’d have doubted being able to pick up basic groceries and toilet paper when I got there. 2020 showed that such things can quickly become the norm without warning.

    Those living in parts of the USA that experienced gasoline shortages after the Colonial Pipeline hack would have been unlikely to have foreseen such an event — but it happened nonetheless.

    Is it really such a leap to contemplate that large-scale cyber attacks or other acts of terrorism, insurrection or war could threaten and disrupt supply chains and national infrastructure? It’s happened before — frequently.

Read the whole thing. 

  • "How to prepare for the end of world"--KCRW. This is the transcript of a May 2021 interview of Mark O’Connell, author of Notes from an Apocalypse, a Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back. O'Connell is Irish and comes at the topic of prepping from the leftist-European point of view. An excerpt:
    ... I started at the book really looking at the whole scene of doomsday preppers, of people who are digging bunkers and stockpiling tinned goods, and talking about the imminence of the End Times. And it's an international movement, there are a lot of preppers in Ireland and in Britain and across Europe, but really, the most kind of fervent and intense stuff tends to come, unsurprisingly, out of the U.S. And there's a couple of reasons for that. 

    One of which is that America seems, to me, to be a country with a particularly kind of intense relationship historically and culturally with the apocalypse. The United States, as a colonial enterprise, was born out of a moment of apocalyptic fervor in Europe, with the Pilgrims, and so on. And there's something about the prepper movement that sort of recapitulates that sense of fervor of the first European colonizers of America and the Pilgrims, and so on. 

    When preppers talk about the collapse of civilization, they're often talking about a situation where there's no more government, where you can't rely on ‘society,’ you can't rely on your fellow people. And it's just you, the kind of rugged individual, pitting yourself against the wilderness or other people, savage people, and so on. And there's a sense of a return to some of the darker mythologies at the heart of that moment in American history with the prepper movement, I think.”

I would counter that when you live in a country of over 300 million people, with a land area almost as big as Europe, it is easy to realize that it is impossible for the government to do anything for you in the event of a national (or larger) emergency. Besides, unlike much of Europe, several large regions of the United States are at risk from earthquakes, others are at risk of hurricanes, and the United States has more tornadoes than the rest of the planet.
    Deadly pandemics, fuel ­shortages and the breakdown of vital supply chains were once the stuff of ­disaster movies.

    But, while we’re getting used to panic-buying toilet rolls and petrol after Covid and Brexit, some savvy Brits were ready years before.

    Preppers – those who “prepare” for natural disasters and other emergencies by learning survival skills and stocking up on food and equipment – have long been dismissed as paranoid extremists.

    For most, it conjures up images of isolated, heavily armed groups such as the Fortitude Ranch, deep in the woods of West Virginia, US, ready to retreat to their bunker and fend off all those who come near.

    But the movement – in a much more modest form – has been quietly growing in the UK too.

    Survival psychologist Dr Sarita Robinson, 46, began prepping after moving from Lancashire to California’s San Andreas fault earthquake zone in the early 2000s to work on her PhD.

    She says: “I was writing about earthquake survivors and preppers. What became clear was that those who prepped were better at surviving.

    “I realised I was living in quite a hazardous area and maybe I should have a quake survival kit.”

Not so "crazy" when the state and local governments are advising you to have food, water, and other supplies stashed away. 

    To begin preparing for a disaster, Ramey urges any prospective preppers to "ignore the extreme stuff like nuclear bunkers" and start small, focusing on what their biggest risks are, which for most people, he says, is personal health and finances.

    "Once those bases are covered, such as an emergency fund with three months worth of expenses, you must look to ensure you're able to survive in your home without any outside utilities or help for at least two weeks."

    From there, Ramey suggests building a "bug-out bag" - a bag packed with survival supplies such as food, water, medications, radios, and flashlights - in the event of an emergency that requires rapid evacuation.

    Ramey says all responsible members of society should begin prepping in some capacity, likening preparing for an emergency to buying homeowner's insurance or car insurance.

Even if your personal health and finances are not in order, you can set aside a three (or four) day supply of food and water that can be stored without refrigeration and can be eaten with no or minimal preparation in the event of a disaster. I would note that the idea of a bug-out-bag (BOB) is rooted in the concept of a "go bag" and a 72-hour kit.  72-hour kits can be purchased ready made, of course, but there are plenty of government, NGO, and private sources on how to assemble a 72-hour kit or checklists for what to include. See, e.g., the suggestions from Ready.gov, Be Ready Utah, Healdsburg CA, University of Houston-Victoria, the Maryland Municipal League, and NationalTerrorAlert.com. 

    Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, an underwater volcano in the South Pacific, spewed debris as high as 25 miles into the atmosphere when it erupted on January 15.

    It triggered a 7.4 magnitude earthquake, sending tsunami waves crashing into the island, leaving it covered in ash and cut off from outside help. 

Some other news stories related to the eruption, earthquake and/or tsunami that struck Tonga: 

VIDEO: "CLEWS | Ep. 02: Furry Cat Litter & Jordan Peterson"--Felix Rex (22 min.)
Another episode of Clown World News (CLEWS).

News & Current Events:

    Both are also charged for a booklet Rasanen wrote and Pohjola published in 2004. Pohjola told The Federalist in an exclusive in-person interview in November 2021 that he asked Rasanen to write the booklet because she was qualified, as a medical doctor and the wife of a pastor. That booklet affirms the classic understanding of sex as reserved solely for marriage, and marriage as comprising one man committed to one woman for life.

    In spring 2019, the two were suddenly served with criminal charges for writing and publishing this booklet decades ago, well before Finland passed its hate crimes laws on behalf of powerful special interests who dispute the differences between the sexes and their role in procreation. Rasanen and Pohjola have been summoned several times by Finnish police to be interrogated separately for hours about intricate details of their theology.

    In their interrogations, the police demanded that Rasanen and Pohjola recant their beliefs. Both refused. Both have also noted the contrast between their country’s claim to be a free and modern democracy that allows for full and open debate and the way they have been treated, as thought criminals.

    What all of this suggests, especially in the complete absence of any confirmed evidence of a “mass grave” or a coverup, is that the whole story is a giant fiction. Its purpose was to provoke a moral panic, demonize the Catholic Church, and make global headlines by peddling historical grievances. And it worked exactly as planned.

    But understand this: seven months on from this manufactured moral panic, there will be no backtracking from the media, no following up about the hundreds of corpses “discovered” in a “mass grave.” There will be no questions asked, and no demands for evidence.

    Ian Austen of The New York Times, for example, who back in May wrote about the nonexistent “evidence” of a “mass grave containing the remains of 215 children,” has not followed up on his reporting. The closest he came was in October, when he wrote a story about Pope Francis expressing a willingness to visit Canada for “indigenous reconciliation,” and repeated his earlier claim that, “the remains of hundreds of Indigenous children were found on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.”

    No, they weren’t. Nothing has been found there, because no one has looked. Probably no one ever will.
    Chinese mothers gave birth to 10.62 million babies last year, an 11.5 per cent drop from 12 million in 2020, the NBS confirmed. The national birth rate fell to a record low of 7.52 births for every 1,000 people in 2021, from 8.52 in 2020.

    The national death rate was 7.18 per thousand last year, putting the national growth rate at 0.34 per thousand.

For years, significant and continuing losses have undermined every effort aimed at lasting economic and social development. The neighboring Balkans risk becoming a "desert" due to unemployment and, above all, emigration, especially of the young. This scenario emerges from different pieces of a complex puzzle being put together in recent weeks. These pieces include the fundamental one posed by the census in Bulgaria, which has certified an 11% drop in population over the last ten years. Another census, the one in neighboring North Macedonia, the first to be conducted in the country since 2002, confirmed that the problem is widespread, with provisional results that have worried the authorities in Skopje. According to the first data processed by the National Statistical Office, Macedonia would now have about 1.8 m inhabitants, about 10% less than twenty years ago, with 600,000 Macedonians now living abroad. Perhaps even lower than the real ones, these numbers speak of a demographic catastrophe. Those who leave the country are predominantly young people, whereas the cradles remain empty at home, and the number of older people is growing. And Macedonia is far from being an exception. Even in neighboring Romania, which is already a member of the EU, the consequences due to migration to more prosperous countries now appear uncontrollable.

VIDEO: "Could China Invade Taiwan in 2022?"--China Uncensored (16 min.)
Short take is that this coming autumn, Xi Jinping will attempt to be selected for a third time to head up the Chinese Communist Party, but he may face stiff opposition; and if he feels that he needs a boost to consolidate his power, an invasion of Taiwan might just do the trick.

Analysis & Commentary:

    The research in Sullivan’s book is impressive and convincing. But the subtitle of the book, “A Cold Case Investigation,” is misleading, for the case may never have been that cold.

    Early on, the book makes apparent that some people knew the identity of the person who betrayed Frank’s family to the Nazis. There is a strong possibility that Frank’s own father, Otto, the only family member to have survived the Holocaust, knew.

    One is even given a rough chronology as to when he gained this knowledge. As shown by Sullivan and the research team, Otto went from feverish cooperation with the official police investigation in 1948 to indifference by the time the next official investigation in 1963 was conducted.

    Otto may have supplied the reason when he told journalist Friso Endt that the family’s betrayer was Jewish. One could gather from this that either Otto was trying to protect a fellow Jew and keep what happened to his family focused on the Nazis or that he knew and forgave the betrayer because the latter faced the monstrous decision of protecting his own family by giving up others.

    The most remarkable piece of evidence unearthed for the first time by the researchers was their discovery of an anonymous typed copy of a note sent to Frank’s father identifying the betrayer as a Jewish notary named Arnold van den Bergh. Miep Gies, who helped get the Frank family into the secret room in 1942, may have known about Van den Bergh as well when she hinted during a 1994 lecture that the betrayer was Jewish.

    One of the most miserable groups of American workers is women, who face a “burnout crisis” and report the highest levels of workplace exhaustion and dissatisfaction. A 2021 study by McKinsey & Co. and LeanIn.Org (ironic) found that 42% of women say they feel burned out often or almost always. According to the same study, 1 in 3 women says they have considered downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce this year.

    Paradoxically, women in this country were promised that we would finally be fulfilled and empowered if we entered the workforce. Unlike my mother and grandmother’s generation, who were raised to become mothers and wives, my entire generation was taught that our careers will give us deep meaning and allow us to make a difference in the world. That promise rings hollow for several reasons. On a personal level, it creates a mentality in which the loss of one’s career can lead to a devastating emotional void, and on a societal level, it has been manipulated for all sorts of damaging corporatist ends. So why is it still orthodoxy in most feminist circles that going to work equals liberation?

The Feminist Movement was comprised of two main doctrines: sex without consequences and forcing women into the work force. We could be forgiven if you thought that the latter was intended to flood the workforce with new workers in order to stagnate wages. In any event, the author concludes her piece:

To put it in layman’s terms, modern feminist culture has polished the turd that is wage slavery and presented it to us as liberation. We should always resist the temptation to look to an ideological movement for our salvation, but especially when that movement peddles mindless hustler culture as a certain panacea for complex personal ills. When someone advertises “work makes free,” you might wish to remain skeptical. Even if it’s written in pink letters.

VIDEO: "End Time Talks 11: The Jewish View of Gog Magog"--Joel Richardson (12 min.)
Among other things, he discusses yet another error in the Masoretic Text that is source of the Old Testament in all modern versions of the Bible.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

    Webb represents a technological marvel designed for unforgiving requirements to operate hundreds of components without error. This monumental engineering accomplishment combines a photon collector and an equipment assembly under contract to Northrop Grumman.

    Solar panels provide two kilowatts of power, about half that used by a lawnmower. A primary mirror gathers photons that then reflect through a secondary mirror for directing to infrared detectors.

    Supported by a carbon-fiber truss, the primary mirror comprises 18 gold-plated hexagonal tiles designed to flex and tilt via motors. These tiles are composed of beryllium (recall the power control sphere from “Galaxy Quest”), which is both lightweight and stiff. Their total starlight collection area is 48 square feet—five times that of the Hubble Space Telescope (at launch in 1990), despite Webb weighing only 60 percent as much.

    To ensure adequate infrared sensitivity, an ingenious sun shield passively cools Webb’s mirror tiles to –388 degrees Fahrenheit. With the area of a tennis court, the sun shield faces earth and sun, deflecting and reradiating the sun’s energy away from the primary mirror.

    Behind the sun shield, a carbon-fiber container called the “spacecraft bus” stores communication and instrumentation equipment. After arriving at L2, control systems on board will align and calibrate the tiles to ensure proper focus.

    Designing and fabricating the sun shield itself presented enormous difficulties. The sun shield comprises five sheets of Kapton polyimide plastic from DuPont coated with aluminum. The two outermost layers include an additional thin layer of silicon to reflect solar energy away from the mirrors.

    Seams reinforce the sheets to inhibit lengthy rips when struck by micrometeorites. These sheets were folded origami-style into a 15-foot diameter cylinder to fit within the Ariane fairing. While boosted along Webb’s trajectory towards L2, the sun shield had to then carefully unfurl via multiple cables and pulleys tugged by motors.

    Although the sun shield protects the mirrors from solar radiation, the mid-IR detection instrument behind the primary mirror must be further cooled to –448 degrees Fahrenheit. An acoustic resonance chamber specifically configured for the Webb mission accomplishes this energy transfer. This cryocooler buffets helium atoms to thermally separate them and uses heat exchangers to radiate away the excess energy.

    Researchers studying the causes and process of developing age-related health issues developed a vaccine to eliminate cells in the human body that are believed to trigger arterial sclerosis and other diseases.

    The team led by a professor from Juntendo University in Tokyo said the effects of the vaccine were confirmed through experiments using mice.

    Photographer‌ ‌and‌ ‌filmmaker Sasan‌ ‌Amir,‌ ‌27,‌ ‌was‌ ‌taking‌ ‌pictures‌ ‌at‌ ‌a‌ ‌wildlife‌ ‌sanctuary‌ ‌in‌ ‌South‌ ‌Africa‌ ‌when‌ ‌he‌ ‌noticed‌ ‌a‌ ‌cheetah‌ ‌walking‌ towards ‌him.‌ ‌

    The‌ ‌pictures‌ ‌show‌ ‌the‌ ‌cheetah‌ ‌rubbing‌ ‌its‌ ‌head‌ ‌against‌ ‌Sasan‌ ‌and‌ ‌eventually‌ ‌sitting ‌down‌ ‌next‌ ‌to‌ ‌him.‌ ‌

    “I‌ ‌had‌ ‌visited‌ ‌this‌ ‌sanctuary‌ ‌a‌ ‌few‌ ‌times‌ ‌and‌ ‌noticed‌ this‌ ‌cheetah‌ ‌was‌ ‌used‌ ‌to‌ ‌interactions‌ ‌with‌ ‌humans,” Sasan said. “After‌ ‌a‌ ‌while,‌ ‌the‌ ‌cheetah‌ ‌decided‌ ‌to‌ ‌come‌ ‌over‌ ‌to‌ ‌me‌ ‌as‌ ‌I‌ ‌was‌ ‌setting‌ ‌up‌ ‌my‌ ‌camera‌, ‌which‌ ‌was‌ ‌unexpected.‌

    “I‌ ‌slowed‌ ‌down‌ ‌my‌ ‌movements‌ ‌and‌ ‌stood‌ ‌up‌ ‌and‌ ‌looked‌ ‌at‌ ‌the‌ ‌cheetah‌ ‌to‌ ‌show‌ ‌it‌ ‌I‌ ‌was‌ ‌aware‌ ‌that‌ ‌he‌ ‌was‌ ‌coming‌ ‌towards‌ ‌me.‌ ‌

‌    “The‌ ‌cheetah‌ ‌was‌ ‌curious‌ ‌and‌ ‌came‌ ‌slowly‌ ‌closer‌ ‌and‌ ‌sniffed‌ ‌me‌ ‌at‌ ‌first,‌ ‌and‌ ‌then‌ ‌began‌ ‌to‌ ‌purr‌ ‌and‌ ‌rub‌ ‌his‌ ‌head‌ ‌against‌ ‌me.‌ ‌

‌    “It‌ ‌took‌ ‌a‌ ‌few‌ ‌minutes‌ ‌for‌ ‌me‌ ‌to‌ ‌realize ‌what‌ ‌a‌ ‌once-in-a-lifetime ‌moment‌ ‌that‌ ‌was.”‌ ‌

Photographs of the incident at the link.

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3 comments:

  1. John WilderFebruary 1, 2022 at 9:11 PM

    A hearty welcome back! Also, I'm waiting for my copy of Canadian Nancy Drew and the Case of the Missing Corpses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DocentFebruary 2, 2022 at 12:01 PM

      Don't hold your breath. The story already resulted in what it was supposed to do: the burning of dozens of churches and humiliation of the Catholic Church.

      Delete
    2. John WilderFebruary 3, 2022 at 9:10 PM

      Of course, you are right.

      Delete

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