Odds ‘n Sods:

Karen H. forwarded this news item: High sugar prices will soon hit bakeries. Here at SurvivalBlog, we warned you about this as far back as May of 2009. Stock up. (But preferably with more healthy natural sweeteners like honey and stevia.)

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Bruce T. spotted this in Popular Science magazine: New Armored Wall System Assembles Like Legos, Could Replace Sandbags in Afghanistan. Somehow, I doubt that these Big Boy Legos will ever see much use outside of “Green Zone” roadblock set-ups. Let’s face it: Empty sandbags are cheap, and they fit in a backpack. It is safe to predict that sandbags will still be used for a few more centuries. They’ll just start making them from Kevlar, or goat milk spider silk, or somesuch.

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The BBC report: GPS to suffer from awakening sun; As the Sun exits its period of solar activity and the numbers of flares increase, users of sat-nav technology will face errors and outages. (A hat tip to Mac The Gadget Guy, for the link.)

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Don W. sent us an article to file under: Big City OPSEC: Police: Man with weapons cache was preparing for ‘Armageddon’. (This comes from Massachusetts, the birthplace of the American Revolution. My, how times change, and how attitudes differ, regionally. Here in the Unnamed Western State, the sheriff’s deputies would just say : “Nice gun collection”, and “Gee, what a great place to do some pistol practice, when its snowing.” (Or, if inside city limits, they’d probably just issue a stern warning.) Here is William Norman Grigg’s insightful take on this, posted over at the Lew Rockwell blog: Paramilitary Thugs Steal Private Arms Collection.