Spring Break

Sorry I missed the party! But the airports are looney tunes time! I guess the recession doesn't count when you've got Daddy's credit card...come to think of it, that's how the country's being run these days, except they we're the Daddy.

In catch-up, here's a must-read piece from Breibart's new Big Hollywood site on the endless on th propaganda war on those poor, poor Mexicans:

“There is an iron river of guns that flows South into Mexico [from the United States] to supply criminal organizations on the border,” says Tom Mangan, senior special agent with Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) in Phoenix. “They are in the market for machine guns, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles,” he continues. That’s right. The drug gangs can’t buy that and other military stuff like the 40MM grenades and the rifles with launchers...so they drive to the United States and purchase them from American gun dealers at retail. Isn’t that the story you’ve been told? Well, congratulations. America’s First Amendment protected propaganda ministry has punked you on another important issue — this time on behalf of dissembling officials and gun confiscation advocates.

Pretty much covers it. I say the answer is the opposite of the one being suggested: Mexico needs to draft it's on version of the Second Amendment to give the former peasants that have to live in NarcoWorld South a fighting chance. In Mexico, where guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns...now where have I heard that before? 

Wait wait...an even better idea...we get seven guys, including one who dresses in black and is named "Chris"...

Changing gears entirely, with TBD: SURVIVAL I've been thinking a lot about "transition time," a play on Amanda Ripley's "survivors arc" she outlined her book THE UNTHINKABLE. Ripley says that in a disaster, people typically go through three stages — denial, deliberation and finally decisive action. The people who survive are the ones who most quickly move through that arc.

The transition time concept works, I think, in any violent, chaotic encounter...the more quickly we move from "flinch" to "action" defines whether we will succeed or fail...that means training mental flexibility as well as specific skillsets. Goes back to that Ralph Waldo Emerson quote I've used for years and years, "In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed."

The goal of learning multiple skillsets is giving our minds a whole new box of "index cards," that is, responses for chaotic situations. This allows us to move quickly through the deliberation to decisive action since we're prepared and have a response. The "denial" phase is interesting, essentially the primate flinch/freeze reaction gone wrong. Freezing in the face of danger may have worked better when we were climbing around trees in Africa — lots of big predators are mostly sight hunters — but it doesn't work all that hot when you're getting mugged.

Gonna be doing much more research on this topic...expect more writing, or maybe the subject of a podcast.