This weekly Snippets column is a collection of short items: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. Note that we may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.
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Coming from the geographical determinist school of history study, I found this 20-minute video fascinating: Facts In Geography Never Taught In Schools — Thomas Sowell. For some further reading on geographical determinism, I recommend the book Zones of Conflict.
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A special request from JWR:
A close family member of mine is prayerfully looking for a property to buy near Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. He has had no luck thusfar, searching via the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). He is now hoping to find a For Sale By Owner 2+ acre property that is not visible with MLS searches. Here are his specifications:
- If it is a property with an existing 3+ bedroom house: Up to $900,000.
- If it is a property with unimproved land: $400,000.
- If it is a property with an existing septic system, water, and power: $450,000.
Geographically, his search area vaguely includes anything inside of this radius:
- Anywhere east of CDA off of I-90, but no farther east than Mullan Road Historical Park
- Rockford Bay
- Wolf Lodge
- Garwood
- Rathdrum
- Dalton Gardens
- Pleasant View
- Worley/Fighting Creek
- Bonus points for a place near Mica Flats.
He might consider places a bit farther out, but he wants to be near his church (in CDA), and his work in Spokane Valley.
Please let me know if you have such a property available, or just know of one, or if you own a larger property and would willing to sell 2 or more buildable (fairly level) acres of it. That would be an answer to prayer. You can contact me either via e-mail or via the blog contact form. Many Thanks! – JWR
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Reader Joe S. had this response to Tom Christianson’s recent review of the EAA Witness .22 conversion kit:
“I have two EAA Witness (Tanfoglio) pistols that are exceptional – my experiences with the conversion kit were much different – it went back to EAA, twice for “some fitting may be required”, but mine never ran reliably. I sold it online at a loss, with full disclosure about the problems I had run into.
I’m more and more a believer that guns should stick to their designed-for caliber – .45 ACP for 1911s, etc – as for shooting 22LR, which I shoot a lot of lately, there are some really fine guns for that caliber – the Ruger MK series, Ruger 10/22, Taurus TX 22, some of the S&W revolvers, the Browning Buckmark pistols, etc. – why make something work with a caliber that it wasn’t designed for?
I’m not sure that using a .22LR conversion on what was originally a 9mm or .45 ACP handgun makes much sens at all – just like with a self-defense handgun you’d want to use the actual type of bullets that you’ll use in the gun for self defense (frangible, for example, versus “ball” ammo”) using .22LR is gonna be so far away from the actual experience of shooting the ammo you’ll use to defend yourself that about the only thing you’ll practice will be stuff like grip and stance – even racking the slide and handling magazines will be different – certainly felt recoil and muzzle blast will be VERY different – for proficiency practice, bite the bullet and use the actual ammo in the exact gun configuration you’ll use to defend yourself, in my opinion.”
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Lily alerted me to this: Google Is Rolling Out Password-Killing Technology to All Its Accounts.
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One Texas man’s personal history preservation project: Missile Silo (Texas Country Reporter).
Continue reading“SurvivalBlog Readers’ & Editors’ Snippets”