Category: Odds ‘n Sods

Frequent content contributor (and top notch novelist) Michael Z. Williamson mentioned two interesting articles posted over at the Box O’ Truth web site: New tests on pistol shotshells, and will school books stop bullets? (To explain: A candidate for the office of Texas state superintendent of schools recently said that he wants to distribute thick used textbooks to students so they can shield themselves from school shooters.)    o o o London Underground contact surfaces to get anti-flu disinfectant silver spray.    o o o There is currently an interesting thread about walking sticks/staves over at The Claire Files. Yes, …

A grim statistic from France: Thusfar for the year 2006, an average of 112 cars per day have been torched by rioters.     o o o NASA says: The Greenland ice sheet is shrinking fast.    o o o Alaska eskimo villagers living in bird flu’s flight path.  

From Mish Shedlock’s blog on October 21st, titled “Easy Button”: U.S. house builders scramble to unload their inventory in a collapsing market.    o o o A University of Washington economic geologist counters the Peak Oil theory, asserting that new technology will assure oil supplies that won’t run out for many centuries.    o o o The world–especially the Western United States, the Mediterranean region, and Brazil–will likely suffer more extended droughts, heavy rainfalls and longer heat waves over the next century because of global warming,according to a new study.

I was astounded to hear a get rich quick infomercial on the radio on Saturday morning. The marketeer was selling his “DVD course” on how to make millions with “nothing down”, investing in residential real estate. Real estate? They’ve got to be kidding. How do you make money “investing” in a declining market? This was the same pitch I heard a year ago, when the market was booming. And he wasn’t taking about about buying foreclosed properties. He was talking about buying houses “in hot markets” to either flip or to keep as rentals while they “appreciated.” I laughed out …

John the Bowhunter sent this one. The housing slump continues. From Sacramento, California: Now house prices are noticeably declining.    o o o Jason pointed me to this story: Brazilian granny who shot thief to get Rio medal, but may go to jail for “gun crime”    o o o Business booms for fallout shelter industry in Japan following North Korea’s nuclear test. My question: Since Honolulu, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are all now reportedly inside the radius of North Korean nuclear missiles, why aren’t shelter builders in the Western U.S. just as busy? A tip of …

North Korea defiant, amidst fears of second nuclear weapon test. In other headlines, North Korea say that the recent UN sanctions resolution is a “declaration of war.”    o o o The U.S. is beefing up security on the Canadian border, deploying air assets–including drones.    o o o The U.S. Special Forces SCAR rifle acquisition program moves forward: The SCAR has unique specifications that allow the same receiver to be used for both .223 (“SCAR L”) and .308 (“SCAR H”) variants. Hmmm…The army finally gets back on track, nearly 50 years after the T44 versus T48 rifle trials, and …

From Asia Times Online: An interesting, albeit biased, three part analysis of the recent conflict in Israel, by Alastair Crooke and Mark Perry    o o o The U.S. Census Bureau’s population “POPclock” tops the 300,000,000 mark. That is interesting, but it doesn’t have a lot of immediate impact on my family. The nearest neighboring house is 1/2 mile away from the Rawles Ranch. The population density is still just three people per square mile in our county. This is typical for most of the rest of The Un-named Western State (TUWS). OBTW, our friend Fred the Valmet-meister mentioned that …

SurvivalBlog reader “John Smith” recommends the post-apocalyptic novel “The Road”, by Cormac McCarthy.    o o o In case you missed it, here is a link to a PDF of the 2005 U.S. congressional hearing on the Peak Oil Theory    o o o Buffalo , New York continues to dig out, after an early snowstorm

The 2007 Farm Bill will be coming up in Congress soon. Please write your representatives in the Senate and the House and ask them to oppose the USDA‘s unconstitutional, tax-wasting, draconian National Animal Identification System (NAIS). See this post at NoNAIS.org, and Dr. Mary Zanoni’s comments on it. We have not lost yet. Keep up the fight!    o o o Reader P.C.K. mentioned this USA Today article: U.S. Cities’ Disaster Plans are Lacking    o o o Movie deal will make millionaires of the three Mexican fishermen who spent nine months adrift.  

Some scientists claim: Climate change inaction will cost trillions    o o o SurvivalBlog readers D.W., T.P., R.S, and “Hawgtax” all mentioned this story: Wheat stockpiles at a25 year low. My advice: Stock up, while wheat that is already in the supply chain is still inexpensive!    o o o From Newsmax: President Bush signs ports security bill. This law is aimed at stopping terrorists from secretly importing nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons into the United States inside one of the 11 million shipping containers that enter the nation each year. Most of these are currently not inspected.    

In a recent issue of the Sovereign Society A-Letter, Eric Roseman noted with alarm that the credit derivatives market is now has a massive $26 trillion (with a “T”) dollars in play. This market has more than doubled in size over the last 12 months. Roseman says that he fears that the derivatives market has become a virtual time bomb. I concur. Someday, possibly in the near future, the market will start making big swings and the hedge traders are going to get blind-sided. Losses could be in the hundreds of billions or even the trillions, making the recent $6 …

“Its called a cricothyrotomy not a tracheotomy…” I’ve noticed the new Jericho television series has sparked some interesting threads of conversation at The FAL Files, AR-15.com, and many other Internet forums. SurvivalBlog’s frequent content contributor Rourke has even started a Jericho-dedicated Yahoo discussion group. Check it out. OBTW, we don’t own a television here at the Rawles Ranch, so don’t ask me my opinion about the series, or anything else on television for that matter. (We only watch “Elk-evision”, from our porch.)    o o o The Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper published a recent “scare tactics” article by Tom Paulson …

One of my recent web searches turned up this interesting site: Owl’s Nest Plantation–a supplier of herbs and spices, in bulk quantities.   o o o Administration Iraq Study Group considers a partitioned Iraq. Don’t they remember what happened when Pakistan was partitioned from India?   o o o Reader D.W. sent us a link regarding the collapse of the Amaranth Advisors derivatives trading firm: A $6 billion gamble gone bad. Here is a quote from the article: “The hedge fund Amaranth Advisors, which is preparing to shut down after losing more than $6 billion because of bad energy trades, …

A nightmare for the intel analysts in Z Division: A defiant North Korea conducts a nuclear bomb test   o o o North Korea’s bomb ‘would kill 200,000’   o o o The folks at The Pre-1899 Specialist told us that their recently acquired batch of 8 x 57 pre-1899 Turkish contract Oberndorf Mauser rifles is going fast. This is by far the nicest batch of Turks that they’ve ever had. Since they were all made between 1894 and 1896, they are Federally exempt “antiques” –which means no paperwork required for delivery to most of the 50 States. (They come …

Getting America Really Ready.    o o o Experts warn of an accidental atomic war: Nuclear missile retrofitted for conventional attack on Iran could set off alarm in Russia.    o o o I noticed that Wiggy’s (one of our first and most loyal advertisers) currently has their excellent Combat Desert Parkas on sale.