People often ask me why I choose to carry a concealed weapon. When I respond that there is real crime being committed all around us, and that I refuse to forfeit my chances when confronted with it, the answer is usually the same.

That’s just sensationalism. It’s very safe in America. The times in which you would ever need to protect yourself with a gun are mostly fantasy, constructed merely to support your argument.

No, they aren’t.

A buddy of mine recently underscored why carrying a weapon is not an outlandish idea. He had just purchased a Nintendo Wii, at a Walmart in a small town, in broad daylight, when someone came up behind him and his girlfriend.

He said, “Hey, is that one of those new Wii’s?” My buddy turns and says excitedly, “Yeah, man, they only had a couple more — you better hurry up if you want one.”

The guy responds, “How about you sell me that one?”, and my friends says, “Nah, man…I’ve been waiting to get one for months…” — not realizing there was any danger. At that point the guy says, “No, you don’t understand — how about you just GIVE me that one…” — as he pulls a knife on him.

In a flash, my buddy drops the Wii, pulls his Glock, and keeps it trained on the guy as he reaches for his mobile phone to call police. The guy didn’t take long to make his decision; he bolted and was gone within 30 seconds.

The police took over seven minutes to get there.

Some may say that the situation wasn’t worth it. Just give the guy the Wii, right? Wrong.

That’s not the country I want to live in. I, as an American, want the right to repel those who attempt to infringe upon my freedoms. And pulling a knife on me, while I’m with my woman, in order to steal from me, most definitely qualifies.

Keep in mind: this happened around an hour from where I live, less than a year ago, and similar things are happening nearly every day in my area. The threat isn’t theoretical. It’s not fantasy conjured up to support an argument. It’s real. And its foundation in reality is simultaneously the foundation of my logic for carrying.

If crime was extremely rare I’d be as anti-gun as you can imagine. But it’s not, so I do what I have to. I simply refuse to rely on the government for my security. And as an American, I shouldn’t be asked to.:

[ Windows 95 and 98 Architect Converts to Mac | cultofmac.com ]

Links

[ The Worst Mistake | awok.org ]

A good primer on Geocaching using your iPhone 3G.

Links

[ Geocaching With Your iPhone 3G | tauw.com ]

It’s no secret that most native Chinese see Africans, and blacks in general, as inferior. The dynamics of that sentiment are numerous and I won’t go into them, but China itself seems to be building policy around that general concept.

The approach seems to be, “Africa isn’t doing anything with all that land, so we will. Nobody there will be able to resist us because we’re offering things they don’t have in return.”

From a This London article:

Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with ’slave’ labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals. Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa.

All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own ‘Chinatown’, as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent.

In short, they’ve already raped most of China’s environment, and now they’re moving into Africa with very little resistance and establishing a new home base.

Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called ‘One China In Africa’ policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years.

China is hungry - for land, food and energy. While accounting for a fifth of the world’s population, its oil consumption has risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now providing a third of it; imports of steel, copper and aluminium have also shot up, with Beijing devouring 80 per cent of world supplies.

Not like they’re using the stuff, right? Goodness…

As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply.

In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of ‘African’ souvenirs.

Where will it all end? As far as Beijing is concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any minerals or oil to be extracted from the continent.

A century after Sir Francis Galton outlined his vision for Africa, the Chinese are here to stay. More will come.

It’s genius, really. They’re aggressively colonizing Africa right in front of the world, but nobody is talking about it, let alone doing anything about it. Africa is becoming an extension of China, and all the West can do is watch.

The West has sent billions of dollars to try and jump-start the continent from within, and it was, for the most part, squandered. China says, “fuck this”, and just moves over there and starts taking over. They’re basically enslaving Africans to work them, while maintaining separation between themselves and the natives.

The Real Question

So what should the West do about this? Do we just watch as perhaps the biggest threat of the next 20 years basically annexes a continent, takes over it’s resources, and wage-slaves its population?

Think of the power they’ll gain by essentially owning Africa and everything in it. They’re going to build an entire extension of China. They’re basically spinning up a new Chinese state. Over a quarter million Chinese have already moved, and many, many more are going.

The reality we need to grasp is that China doesn’t care about anyone but themselves. They will pillage anyone and everyone to get ahead, and Africa is an easy target. We need to decide what to do about it. Do we:

1. Try and oppose their incursion, or…
2. Realize that this isn’t likely and go on a land-grab ourselves

Option 2 isn’t really an option. Africa is wise to white people coming in and offering shiny stuff. But evidently they haven’t figured out that China will be even worse. The door is mostly shut to the West doing what China is doing at this point; it’s too politically hot to try and replicate their move.

And China knows this.

So I guess we just watch as China becomes infinitely more prosperous, and establishes a new military stronghold in Africa. Great. I wonder if Rosetta Stone has a Mandarin course…:

This is going to present a whole new set of questions. Do certain groups have these genes more than others? Gender? Race?

I expect this research to get very interesting, very quickly.

Links

[ New Study Finds Link Between Violent Behavior and Genetics | cnn.com ]

Please, for the love of God, bring Fedor to the UFC.

I grow tired of hearing Anderson Silva being called the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. It’s not that Anderson’s not a God — he clearly is — but they’re leaving someone out of the equation. They’re forgetting about Georges St. Pierre.

Silva just destroyed Irvin in one punch at 205, and there’s no doubt that he could dominate at that weight, but I think he’s right when he says his place is at 185. I think he should stay there at 185, and that St. Pierre should come up from 170 to meet him.

That is the fight I want to see — Silva vs. St. Pierre.

The winner of that contest would be the true pound-for-pound champion, and calling Silva by that title before he faces St. Pierre is premature.:

(actually, I’m at 2.7 ;) )

Links

[ Latest Wordpress Download ]

Anyway, I’d be cautious about running this until you’re very comfortable with the commands being executed. Until then, just use it as a list of instructions; even that will save tons of time vs. remembering the commands each time you want to upgrade.

Here’s basically what’s happening:

1. Pull down the latest, cutting-edge copy of Wordpress
2. Back up your existing webroot
3. Delete your Wordpress related content from your webroot
4. Copy the new Wordpress content to your webroot
5. Replace your backed up content into the new install
6. Re-apply the permissions on your webroot
7. Test

And here’s the script:

#!/bin/bash
# Daniel Miessler's script for updating Wordpress using SVN
 
# Set variables
WEBROOT=/path/to/your/webroot
 
# Change directories to your updated wordpress folder (create if necessary)
cd $WEBROOT/wordpress_svn/
 
# Delete any old stuff in there
rm -rf $WEBROOT/wordpress_svn/*
 
# Download the latest version of Wordpress via SVN
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/ .
 
# Change back into your webroot
cd $WEBROOT
 
# Backup your webroot (Really, really make sure this works before continuing!)
cp -a $WEBROOT ../htdocs_backup
 
# Kill off all your Wordspress files in your webroot
rm -rf $WEBROOT/wp*
 
# Copy in your updated Wordpress files from the SVN folder
cp -a $WEBROOT/wordpress/* .
 
# Replace your backed up/customized content from your backup
cp -a ../htdocs_backup/wp-content/plugins/ ./wp-content/
cp -a ../htdocs_backup/wp-content/themes ./wp-content/
cp -a ../htdocs_backup/wp-content/uploaded_content ./wp-content/
cp -a ../htdocs_backup/wp-config.php .
 
# Re-apply proper permissions to your webroot
find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 755 
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 644
find . -print0 | xargs -0 chown apache
 
# Finally, clear your cache and navigate to your site's admin page
#  update the database and make sure your plugins are working
#  http://$yoursite/wp-admin/
# For any questions, email me at daniel@dmiessler.com

And let me know if you have any questions.

Where do you fit?

Links

[ Where Do You Fit? | pewresearch.org ]

From the Damn Interesting Article:

Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly. Anytime the phrase “That’s so weird, I just heard about that the other day” would be appropriate, the utterer is hip-deep in Baader-Meinhof.

I would simplify the explanation to the following: the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon takes place when something that actually pops up around you fairly often, but which you ignore, is brought to your attention.

At that point you actually notice it happening because it has a signature in your brain due to recent exposure and/or interaction. So it’s not that it necessarily starts happening more (although that could be the case if it’s a meme that’s propagating), but more likely just a sensitivity increase in the perceiver of the stimulus.

Another good example of this is learning about a particular vehicle on a car lot and then noticing a million of them around town. Although, that could admittedly be caused by the meme phenomenon as well.

Links

[ Memes | wikipedia.org ]

I think Apple could put out enough iPhones to maintain stock in Apple and AT&T stores, but they’re choosing not to. They’re pulling a Wii.

I think a big part of the allure of the Wii was the fact that you couldn’t find one for months. It’s a simple matter of wanting things we can’t have. And it’s happening now with the iPhone 3G as well.

Do you know when you’re getting some in?

No way to know…we had a shipment yesterday but they sold out in 11 minutes. And we got a couple in today, but they were special ordered and have already been picked up…

This builds desire, and it’s a tactic that melds perfectly with Apple’s elitist, “I’m special” marketing strategy.:

Links

[ Downgrading an iPhone from 2.0 to 1.4 | brooksgarrett.com ]

(thanks to Marisol for the link)