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Posted on 05/03/2008 8:48:06 AM PDT by HairOfTheDog
Welcome to The Hobbit Hole!
Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is anoble thing!
O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain.
and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
but better than rain or rippling streams
is Water Hot that smokes and steams.
O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.
O! Water is fair that leaps on high
in a fountain white beneath the sky;
but never did fountain sound so sweet
as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
"Mythbusters" have done a couple of "swords myths" episodes. The have an air-powered mechanical "arm" that can swing horizontally at 4x human speed and strength. Using high-quality modern swords in flat-on-flat testing, the rapier went down first. High speed video showed a traveling sine wave moving up and down the blade. It snapped far below the point of contact. The long sword was the last one left standing, after taking out the samurai sword.
In a test of quality steel against cutlery stainless, the "good" samurai sword took out the cheap one edge-on-edge. Again, the cheap blade failed at a weak point far away from the point of impact. An edge-on-edge test of two quality samurai swords showed both "survived", but with huge chips taken out at the contact point. I'm sure close-up study would show that both would be considered useless after that.
I think there will always be a search for reenactment weapons that are safe, affordable, and look and feel right. Meanwhile, I'm very satisfied with my Cold Steel "Brooklyn Smasher" that I carry in my truck. It's solid polypropylene, and is very handy to have in case a baseball game breaks out without warning.
I haz them too, and needz all of them since I'm stuck here alone for another two hours.
see more dog pictures
*sigh*
That’s a bit too close to home today.
Ungh. Ineedadrink. Or some ice cream. Or both.
Evening Ramius - saw your posts on swords and have read all of them quite closely. That is an excellent skill set to acquire. My hats off to you for picking such a worthwhile endeavor.
Although I have several Wilkinsons on my wall in the den, I have virtually no idea of how they would actually be put to use. This is another good reason to have a weaponry oriented moot.
I’m sure there’s more than one of our fellowship that would like to be more acquainted with the care and handling of long pointy things. :-)
LOL
hppf ,ptomoh
It’s so close to Friday...
hppf ,ptomoh
I’ve been up since about 2. :~(
I went to bed at about 2 EST.
It’s just not right for co-workers to make me want to hurt them this early in the morning...
I slept all night... er... but I had really weird dreams...
Thanks Mister Bowman...
I’ve got a long road ahead of me. There’s an awful lot to learn and much practice, practice, practice. But it’s really interesting because there’s a great deal of history that comes along in the package.
A weapons-moot would be something good.
You're trying to get to Carnegie Hall???
Heh. Nah, for that I’d just use GPS. :-)
Kids these days....
That. Is. So. Neat!
Thanks! I think so too!
I’m still a noobie. But I’m soaking up as much as I can as fast as I can. The all-day seminar on Saturday was a huge boost. Kinda put it all together and gave me a foundation to build on.
In some ways it’s very simple. There aren’t that many basic guards and strikes. Yet the combinations, feints and variations are so very complex.
It’s like tennis. As my old tennis coach used to say: It’s the easiest game in the world to play, yet it is impossible to master. You have a fairly large ball, a large thing to hit it with, and an enormous target. And yet... mastery eludes everyone.
Looks like our lovely Greeners are up their tricks again:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2065862/posts?page=1
I saw that on the TV news. Weird. Just randomly along a track somewhere? I wonder if it failed to go off wherever it was supposed to go off, and someone just dumped it there.
When you come down this weekend, can you bring the small live trap that dad has?
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