Wednesday Wisdom: 17 December 2025

Medal of Honor: Jose Mendoza Lopez 

Occupying a shallow hole offering no protection above the waist, he cut down a group of 10 Germans. Ignoring enemy fire from an advancing tank, he held his position and cut down 25 more enemy infantry attempting to turn his flank. Glancing to his right, he saw a large number of infantry swarming in from the front. Although dazed and shaken from enemy artillery fire which had crashed into the ground only a few yards away, he realized that his position soon would be outflanked.

Again, alone, he carried his machine gun to a position to the right rear of the sector; enemy tanks and infantry were forcing a withdrawal. Blown over backwards by the concussion of enemy fire, he immediately reset his gun and continued his fire. Singlehanded he held off the German horde until he was satisfied his company had effected its retirement.

 

 ___________________ 

Some Notes on Using Blanks for Training

There are significant dangers involved in using blanks for training. An insufficiently-trained individual can mistake live rounds for blanks, as in the 2016 fatal training accident in Punta Gorda, Florida. Remember, blanks themselves can sometimes cause death or serious injuries.

___________________ 

Man Tackles, Chokes Armed Walmart Shopper

Don’t be stupid. Wanna-be hero – took matters into his own hands and landed in hot water when he attacked a concealed weapon permit holder.

 ___________________ 

Meditations on Paper Armour

A single sheet of paper can hold ideas, hopes, dreams; it can carry a song, orders, love; it can recall history, bear witness when none are left and it can serve as the base of art for bairns as well as their great-grandsires.

For all of it's utility and history, though, there is one area in which paper is sorely lacking: It makes lousy armour.

 ___________________

Personal Boundaries 

The purpose of analyzing this stuff beforehand is to make sure that even my frozen brain and my in-denial guts cannot lull me into cooperating if I am ever in one of the extreme places where a victim really needs to fight if she is going to survive. Because I’ve thought about this stuff in advance, if something like it ever happens, even my frozen brain will have a definite decision point.

 ___________________

The Right, Responsibility, and Readiness of Carrying a Handgun

Watch the news on any given day and you will clearly see we live in difficult times. Grab a history book and you will learn this is nothing new. Log onto social media and you will notice there are a lot of experts on both subjects, and they are more than willing to tell you all about it. Whether you believe the news is fake, history is a lie or social media experts are idiots does not change the fact the fight is coming, and we need to be ready.

 ____________________ 

Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, May 1954

A short History of Viet Nam. In 1858, the first French colonists arrived in what was then called French Indo-China, which included modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Over succeeding decades, French missionaries converted many locals from Buddhism to Catholicism. Ethnic Chinese came down from the north, at the invitation of the French, to become shopkeepers, as the area was increasingly influenced by French culture. The French built schools, dams, hospitals, sanitation systems, factories, churches, and plantations. However, like the Romans before them, they had zero tolerance for rebellion. French secret police ruthlessly tracked down local dissidents. Most were quietly executed. Like so many civilizations facing colonization by external forces, indigenous Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians saw their ancient cultures relentlessly dissipating. Rebellion was always just under the surface. 

 ____________________ 

The “21 Foot Rule”

Hint: There is no such thing. To put everyone in the readership on a level playing field, this “21 Foot Rule” is what many of us also know as the Tueller Drill. In the early 1980’s, Sgt Dennis Tueller conducted studies involving how quickly a subject armed with a knife could cover a given distance, before an officer could react, draw and fire effectively at the knife wielding attacker.

 ____________________ 

Threat Modeling: Profile Elevation

Profile elevation is a fairly intuitive concept. For our purposes we can describe it as† “the generally undesirable condition of:

-- becoming more visible to one’s adversary, and/or

-- becoming more interesting to one’s adversary.”

Being either or both more visible and/or interesting to your adversary is a bad thing in nearly any adversarial situation (Murphy’s Laws of Combat: Try to look unimportant, the enemy may be low on ammunition). If you are highly visible to an adversary your movements, whether online or in the real world, are easier to track. If you are interesting to your adversary, he or she will be willing to invest time and money to pursue you, digitally or physically.

 ____________________ 

British Man Arrested in England for Posing with Shotgun While on Vacation in Florida

Richelieu-Booth Posing with a Remington 870

John Richelieu-Booth, a 50-year-old self-employed IT contractor from England, was arrested by British police after returning home from a vacation in Florida for posing awkwardly while holding a Remington 870 shotgun in the Sunshine State.

Richelieu-Booth told the British newspaper The Telegraph that he was completely shocked by the “Orwellian” decision made by his local constabulary, the West Yorkshire Police, who first warned him about the picture he posted on his social media but then arrested him several hours later.

 ____________________ 

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS makes its closest approach to Earth on 19 Dec 25

Every now and then the Universe reminds us of just how small we are. Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Earth on Friday, Dec. 19, marking a key moment in the journey of one of the rarest visitors ever observed in our solar system.

Discovered on July 1 by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescopes in Chile, 3I/ATLAS is only the third confirmed interstellar object known to have passed through our cosmic neighborhood, following 1I/'Oumuamua in 2017 and comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. Its trajectory shows that it originated from beyond our solar system and will eventually travel back into interstellar space.

  ____________________ 

If you enjoy reading these articles, please follow/subscribe. The link is on the upper right side of the page. All that will happen is that you will receive an e-mail when I post an article. Your information will never be distributed.