Bullethead

@JFM Gaming isn't evil. Or if it is, then it's just one more of many "evils" I wholeheartedly embrace and will gladly burn in Hell for. Why do you think Hell's got better bandwidth than Heaven? That said, I think OFF is rated "M for mature". This isn't because of any graphic or profane content, it's because it's the sort of game that appeals to folks who've outgrown their puppy-love crushes on instant and massive carnage. I still dally with such things, especially when I've had a really bad day, but I'm much more comfortable around things like OFF as my long-term commitments. Thus, IMHO, OFF shouldn't cater to the twitch-gaming crowd. Let them play ROF. In these days of widespread low-ping connections, there's no longer a need for AIs to attempt to simulate this environment. Instead, IMHO AIs should focus on being more true to real life. @Hasse Wind We already have a "Terminator" mode; no need to get rid of it. Just add a new Workshop setting to choose between it and the (hopefully) more realist WOFF AI. @Winding Man Thanks for explaining "HTH". At first I thought you meant "head-to-head", which would have been the worst news imaginable. But isntead, I'm now looking forward even more to WOFF.

I learned an old French cavalry song while on leave just now. I figure at least half of us were in hussar regimennts before the war so here it is. It's a good song for us, the modern-day hussars :). I only speak a little of my local patois so my translation is rough at best. Perhaps somebody with more French can do a better job. Still, I think I got the gist of it: DANS LES HUSSARDS Le hussard au quartier The hussar is in quarters Le hussard au quartier The hussar is in quarters N'a pas besoin de marchepied He doesn't need to do parades Pour engueuler son brigadier To make his brigadier weep REFRAIN Ah, la belle vie que l'on mène Ah, what a beautiful life we lead Dan les hussards, dan les hussards! In the hussars, in the hussars! Ah, la belle vie que l'on mène Ah, what a beautiful life we lead Dan les hussards, dan les hussards! In the hussars, in the hussars! Le hussard au manège The hussar is riding Le hussard au manège The hussar is riding Malgré la basane qui l'protège Despite the protective skin Use plus vite son dos que son siège His saddle wears out quickly REFRAIN Le hussard à l'hosto The hussar's at the inn Le hussard à l'hosto The hussar's at the inn Respirant le parfum de gog'no He breathes the aroma of excessive merry-making Croit vagu'ment sentir l'eau d'Botot To him it smells like the king's mouthwash REFRAIN Le hussard à la guerre The hussar goes to war Le hussard à la guerre The hussar goes to war Defend fièrement sa bannière He fiercely defends his banner Sans jamais tourner le derrière Without ever turning back REFRAIN Le hussard au plumard The hussard wears his plumage Le hussard au plumard The hussard wears his plumage Rêve qu'il devient porte-étendard He dreams it befits the standard-bearer Et s'réveil en t'nant son tranchard Then he wakes up with his tankard REFRAIN Le hussard en balade The hussar is on a joyride Le hussard en balade The hussar is on a joyride Des bell' filles reluqu' l'esplanade The pretty girls on the esplanade Et sent son cœur en marmelade Put his heart in marmelade REFRAIN Le hussard en congé The hussar is on leave Le hussard en congé The hussar is on leave S'contente de bien boire et manger He's content to drink and eat well Et ne demande qu'à rengager And asks only to come back (to the colors) REFRAIN Le hussard à la messe The hussar's in the mess Le hussard à la messe The hussar's in the mess S'assied derrière une comtesse He sits behind a countess Pour s'assurer de sa noblesse To assure himself of her nobility REFRAIN Le hussard en amour The hussar is in love Le hussard en amour The hussar is in love Va de l'avant comme un tambour He goes forward as to the drum Jamais on n'l'a vu reste court You've never seen such drive REFRAIN Le hussard au cercueil The hussar is in his coffin Le hussard au cercueil The hussar is in his coffin Méme après qu'il a tourné de l'œil Even after his eyes have rolled up S'ecrie encore avec orgueil He still exclaims with pride (the refrain) REFRAIN

What's bad about having a decent place to live, a full belly, and a well-paid job? I daresay that a minimum of 1/3 of the world's population would sell their children's souls for a full belly just once a week and about 2/3 would sell their own souls for that and a roof that doesn't leak. Is it any wonder, then, that we have plagues, famines, wars, crime, and terrorism? I doubt there's a single dirt-poor person in the world today who doesn't know exactly how bad he's got it compared to folks like us. The amount of human suffering out there is unfathomable, and to my own admittedly jaundiced eye, I'd much rather people not suffer than save however many endangered species. Maybe I really care about my fellow man, maybe I only care because when dirt-poor people get mad enough, they come blow up stuff I care about. Call it what you will. But either way, in my book peoples' needs outweigh the needs of all other creatures combined. Thus, reserving any space whatsoever as "natural habit" for other species is the height of cruelty. Seriously, besides letting members of the citified, well-fed few have a change of scenery on their vacation time, what other benefits do nature preserves provide at all? Zero. Everybody who isn't citified, whether well-fed or not, sees such things every day. And meanwhile, how many thousands of human beings starve to death for want of the food that could have been grown there, or die of diseases that could have been cured by drug factories built there? And really, in the Americas at least, what is presently considered "virgin wilderness" is actually just weeds growing up in land previously developed and fundamentally changed by the Indians, before European diseases wiped them out. So the whole concept is absurd anyway. Apart from Antarctica, there's no "virgin wilderness" on this planet, nor has there been for at least 10-20,000 years other than some Polynesian islands. Again, we fundamentally disagree. How do we break the rules? We were made to the same constraints as everything else, and many other creatures do the same things we do. About the only things we do that other animals don't is joint objects together (compound tools), use fire, and have a huge amount of symbolic and abstract vocabulary, with which we invent new and unnecessary troubles for ourselves. But these skills are what Nature gave us, not some outside agency outside like UFO aliens. Modern humans (as opposed to our ancestors) got to where we are today because we can wring the absolute most out of the environment to suit our needs. It's what we DO. We can no more change this than we can violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. We avoided hunting our prey to extinction by domesticating it and ranching it on continually more efficient scales, to the point that hardly anybody in the developed world ever sees anything of it except in the grocery store or restaurant. We avoided famine by domesticating plants and growing enough to feed us, with some to spare in case the harvest failed. Equilibrium does not exist on this planet of constant moodswings. The closest approximation, and it is only an approximation, is in the most developed of human-altered environments. In fact, the entire purpose of humans altering their environment is to provide some stability and slight assurance of having food tomorrow. Which is exactly the same reason the beaver builds his dam. But even the world's most advanced agriculture is still prey to unpredictable, uncontrollable Nature. All that human art and skill have done, even in the 21st Century, is to provide a buffer to absorb without notice (at least to the citified fed by the world's most advanced farmers) the milder episodes of the constant fluctuations. Everywhere else in the world, bad years still spell doom for uncounted multitudes, be they less-fortunate humans or other lifeforms. And this is just considering the normal, year-to-year variation around a relatively long-term average (which apparently lasts no more than a generation), the sort of thing a rain dance or a prayer to whatever deity might cure when the best of selective breeding and irrigation technology wasn't quite up to the challenge. And the sort of thing so-called climatologists are going on about. I'm not even counting the many wildcards of various natural disasters, let alone major climate aberations (of which there are many), or even changes from generally warm to Ice Age conditions. Ungrazed plankton isn't such a bad thing. By far the bulk of the world's oxygen comes from phytoplankton (the world IS 75% ocean, after all), and as a result they also absorb most of the world's CO2. And when they die, they sink to the bottom to eventually be subducted, taking that carbon with them into the magma. The Amazon jungle, conversely, is a net drag on the O2/CO2 budget. The sooner it's chopped down (for the 2nd time--the pre-Columbian Indians had already done it), the better. I do agree with others, however, that the root cause of most problems in the world today is that there are too many people for the amount of resources we let them have. But what are we going to do about that? I find it darkly amusing that the very people most up in arms about the environment are also adamant in their opposition to any mandated method of birth control (reproduction being an inalienable human right), and in addition seek to preserve traditional cultures no matter that these condemn their followers to abject poverty and the constant threat of disease and starvation, not to mention are geared to produce the maximum number of children. It's the scale of values I marvel at here. Apparently no amount of human suffering outweighs in their minds the value of some obscure species that noone, besides themselves, have ever heard and noone, not even themselves, would feel the loss of if it disappeared forever. Just to be clear, I myself don't advocate forced birth control any more than I advocate other forms of government intrusion into peoples' lives. So at the bottom line, the choice boils down to 2 things. Either: 1. We make a formal declaration that because the citified leftist rich find the lives of spotted owls, polar bears, whales, or whatever more important than the immeasurable misery and death of everybody else, we'll continue to wall off perfectly good farmland and housing space from our fellow man and be smugly content with the consequences. I mean, seriously, the citified leftist rich are no more likely to view polar bears in their natural habitat than they are the 3rd World poor, and the polar bears present a better picture to their imaginations. Or; 2. We recognize that nothing non-human is worth even 1 poor child starving to death and set about improving conditions for humans, and be damned to the competing species. Drain the swamps, water the deserts, clear the forests, dam the rivers, whatever it takes, and bring everybody's agriculture and industry up to modern standards. And if anything besides our current domesticates survives this, we'll selectively breed it for food, too. And meanwhile, make whatever cultural changes are related to these things to convince people they don't need so many kids as before, because most of them will now survive infancy. Of course, even this will eventually reach its Malthusian limit, but that will be far enough down the road (hopefully) that we'll have thought up some other solution (hopefully). Much as I would like to, I don't see any real middle ground between these extremes. We're trying to live in the middle now and it's definitely not working because it's all just half-measures. For instance, OT1H, the 1st World is trying to keep the 3rd World down, whether this is phrased as avoiding competition or preserving traditional cultures. But OTOH, the 1st World goes in and vaccinates 3rd World children so far fewer of them die, without improving their economies at all. The only result is more people trying to survive on the same resources as before, so a net increase in poverty and human suffering.

Damn, 27 innnings catching.... WTG

About 24 hours ago, a 5' long canebrake rattlesnake nearly bit me puir auld grey-haired mither as she bent down to pull a weed in her garden. In her day, she was the 1st woman on the LSU rifle team and rose to become its captain, so instead of collapsing in a faint, she hobbled back to the house to get her rifle. Just inside the door, she met my aged father. His shotgun was within easier reach, so he grabbed it and neatly decapitated the snake with a load of buckshot. Then, knowing I'm into primitive stuff, they called me asking what to do with the carcass. So it spent the night in my fridge. First thing this morning, I skinned and cleaned the carcass using scrap flakes of flint from my knapping debitage pile. Then I called up one of my Cajun fireman buddies. We were going to make sauce piquant out if it but had some calls between early morning and lunch, so instead we ended up deep-frying it with loads of Cajun seasoning and spices. We got about 9 feet of meat off the snake so this fed the entire clan with some left over after lunch for hors d'oeuvre with supper just now. My buddy also makes primitive bows and was looking for a rattlesnake skin to put on his latest creation, so I traded him the skin in exchange for him making me a necklace out of the vertabral column. If you've never seen such a necklace, they're simply amazing. This snake also had 12 full rattles plus the button, and I'm going to hang that on the end of a new atlatl I'm making. And the important internal organs disappeared amongst those who do or hang with practioners of voodoo and root work. So, a word of advice.... Don't try to bite my mother :)

Well, the "Possum Police" give a maximum length of 70" (as in 5'10") for canebrakes, so the reference I saw to 7'10" obviously wasn't the official state record I thought it was. Still, I know I saw it somewhere, and have seen a number of them about that size, including the 1 I killed. http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/serpentes/canebrake-rattlesnake The reason why mentioned the panther was to give a possible reason for why you couldn't find mention of Lousy Anna's much bigger specimens. That was when I still had hope of finding what I thought was the Lousy Anna record. If Lousy Anna's own "Possum Police" don't acknowledge the existence of panthers at all, despite all the evidence to the contrary, then it shouldn't be surprising that folks outside Lousy Anna hadn't heard of our bigger snakes. I told you the skin's length as of the day I measured it, so it really doesn't matter how tall I am, especially as you can't see anything below my chest. But for the record, I'm 5'11" and my arms span a full fathom when fully extended, measured from the middle fingertips. As you can see in the pic, they're not fully extended, so the skin is obviously shorter than 6'. And I agreed with you that skins are too variable in size to be reliable indicators of length.

I see this as net gain for humanity. Squid are tasty, nutritious, grow fast, and breed like roaches. They're like a marine version of swine in these features and will feed many hungry people. You can't say the same for sharks. I think the fundamental difference between your POV and mine is that you have a clear and sharp distinction between "man-made" and "natural". You therefore believe that Nature and "the environment" includes everything on the planet EXCEPT people and their works. As a direct and inescapable corollary of this attitude, you see everything people do as necessarily disruptive of the environment and the natural order. And as a direct result of that, you think that people are more powerful than Mother Nature. Otherwise, you'd never be able to place Man in the god-like position of "steward of the planet", nor ascribe to Man the god-like power to affect global climate either for good or bad. I, OTOH, have no distinction whatsoever between "man-made" and "natural". In fact, I don't even use the former term at all. People are merely animals like any other. I see us as products of the exact same evolutionary and environmental forces that created every other living thing on this planet. Everything we do is a direct result of how Mother Nature shaped us, so everything we do is 100% natural and perfectly in line with the parameters this planet operates under. Do we change the environment to suit us, without regard for other creatures? Certainly. That's precisely how we've survived to this point. But we're definitely not alone in this. Take, for example, the beaver. Beaver dams are ecological disasters, at least to the things that preferred the original stream environment or depended on the water further downstream. But the beaver doesn't care, he just builds his dam because it makes his own life easier. So what was once a beautiful forest river turns into a stagnant pond amdist scrub brush where trees used to grow, then a festering swamp, and finally dry land, and everything that used to live there is either dead or moved elsewhere. Of course, other things moved in that liked these different environments, but the original stuff is gone. There's no difference in motive between people and beavers when it comes to building dams. There is, however, a big difference in effect. Beavers see dams as temporary homes. Once they've deforested the surrounding area and the pond starts to silt up, they'll move to a new river and repeat the process, spreading their malicious environmental impact. People, however, see dams as long-term solutions to various problems, so do all in their power to keep them from silting up or going dry. Thus, we can get by with fewer dams, and can build them without deforesting the surrounding area. But environmentalists give the much more destructive beaver a pass because he's cute and fuzzy, while doing all in their power to prevent people from "screwing up the environment". And this is all because they just can't see that people and their actions are just as much part of the environment as beavers and its actions. Then there's also the question of what is "screwing up the environment" in the 1st place? The environmental lobby seems to think that this is making any deviation from the status quo of today. IOW, if there isn't a dam there today, then there shouldn't be one there tomorrow, either (unless, of course, it's built by a "natural" beaver). But wait a minute... If people think there's need of a dam there, then the environment is already "screwed up" or at least not optimum, at least from peoples' POV. And while surely building a damn there will displace at least some of the current residents of the area, others who like the new habitat will move in. Thus, in terms of net environmental impact, it's pretty much a wash for so-called "natural" critters AND it helps people to build the dam, so how could this possibly be considered "screwing up the environment"? It can be only by arrogating humanity to the level of gods, despite all evidence to the contrary. Furthermore, it can only be done at the expense of losing complete sight of what nature is all about. Nature is constant turnover. Nature creates and destroys species all the time. IIRC, over 99% of all species that have ever existed are extinct, and at least 99% of those went extinct all by themselves, without any help from us. Thus, attempting to keep the environment as it is right now is against the natural order of things. Any success in this direction would be totally "artificial" and "man-made", not "natural". And this brings us back to sharks and squid. OK, so sharks don't like things right now, but squid love it. In the big scheme of things, what's the difference? The ocean is still full of critters. But now more of them are edible and have the capacity to feed more people than the old set. How is this possibly a bad thing? See, there's a necessary corollary to my side of the "man-made vs. natural" divide. Because I see people as just another type of animal, bound by Nature instead of separate from and superior to it, I see us as still in direct competition for food, space, and other resources with every other organism on this planet, just as they're in competition with us and each other. The "Law of the Jungle" still applies to us as a whole, even if not to most individual people these days. Therefore, every organism that eats the same stuff as we do is a blood enemy and every organism that occupies space we could use ourselves is an obstacle. IOW, where you see biodiversity, I see competition. Where you see wilderness, I see untapped recourses. Thus, from my POV, the best way to take care of the environment is to arrange it to support the most people possible with the highest standard of living. I'd reduce the entire biosphere to only the animals we eat, the plants we both eat, and the microbes and insects that allow these plants and animals to exist. I'd turn every square inch of reasonably level ground above and below sea level into farmland, housing, or industry. I see this view as both perfectly logical and 100% natural. And this people-only environment we'd create would be 100% natural, because it would be built by 100% natural animals, following their 100% natural instincts, and using their 100% natural abilities. It's what Mother Nature Herself designed and built us to do.

I'm sorry I mentioned bigfoot. I don't believe in the thing myself. Now, I do believe in crazy rednecks who go feral from consuming too much stump juice, magic mushrooms, and meth out in the woods. Some of my neighbors are like that and I imagine that outsiders who've never spoken with them in the grocery store or church might mistake them for bigfoot, even in daylight . I keep waiting for the so-called "History Channel" to air a new "reality" show called "Troll Hunters". It would follow the adventures of a group of Indians stumbling around blindly in the Norwegian woods at night, all because they'd heard of this ancient European legend about trolls, and had found written references to them in various sagas and medieval manuscripts .

You being wrong has a huge downside. You just can't see it because you're so convinced you're right. It's very hard to discuss climate change anymore because it's become so political, even religious to some folks. But you have to understand that the ONLY reason climate change is a topic these days is because of politics. The politicians injected it into public consciousness and continue to hype it up with bad science and propaganda to scare people into giving up more of their freedoms and allowing the government to take over more and more of the economy. Anybody who raises concerns about the scientific basis for all the doomsday scenarios is shouted down or even burned as a heretic. Prior to this happening, the climate was changing just constantly and often as it continues to do. But folks just accepted that as the natural way of things and dealt with it, enjoying the good years and enduring the bad years. There were frequent heat waves, cold snaps, droughts, and deluges all the time, and nobody really thought in terms of a constant state of climate. And up until a couple generations ago, most people in the world were farmers, so were very interested in what the weather was doing, and paid close attention to all these periodic changes. But these days, most people live in cities doing non-agricultural jobs, so they only notice weather as it affects their morning commute. Having thus tuned the weather out of their minds, they have naturally developed the false assumption that it's been the same as yesterday since the beginning of time. And this means that if some government shill of a climatologist says the climate is changing, they have nothing to compare it to. And they don't realize he's just stating the obvious that's been going on all along without their notice. But because they don't realize this, they believe everything he says. So they get scared and let the government run roughshod over them. THAT is the downside of you being wrong. And that to me is a much, much greater threat to my way of life than even the worst-case doomsday climate BS. Take ethanol for example. Great to drink, terrible as motor fuel. Not only does it rot out all the seals and gaskets in the engine, but it does exactly the opposite of its stated purpose. It contains less energy per unit volume than gasoline, so you have to burn more of it to go the same distance. And producing ethanol uses more fossil fuels and produces more of their emissions than the amount saved by mixing it with gasoline. And all of this costs money, to grow the corn, to make the ethanol, and to mix it with gasoline, which just drives up the price needlessly. IOW, we're now paying more for less gasoline and it's not doing us any good at all. So ethanol totally counterproductive ecologically and economically. But this hasn't stopped the government from mandating its use, and spending vast sums of my tax money on subsidies for people to grow more maize than the normal demand merits. The lure of these subsidies is such that vast amounts of farmland, which once produced crops people actually needed, are now growing useless maize. And this has resulted in higher prices and shortages of these other crops we actually need. Not to mention that the price of EVERYTHING you buy has increased because fuel used to get it to you is more expensive. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what happens when you believe what the government says and give it free rein to take control over things it has no business touching. I have thought about it a lot, and I have to say that I would much prefer running around naked poking supper with a spear and scalping the neighbors than living in a world going much further along the misguided path the left is taking us down. I have lived in holes in the ground on 0.75 small, poor meals a day for months at a time so I know I can handle it. I also know I'll be sore and stiff, sick, and hungry most of the time, but at least I'd be free and in charge of my own destiny. And I'd know that all the people who currently make my life miserable were dead. I'd consider that a fair trade, so would be quite content.

Sure thing ;). But I just mentioned the lack of bigfoot sightings around here to show that just because folks in an area claim they've got cryptozoological things doesn't mean they're nuts, This particular corner of Lousy Anna (West Feliciana Parish, about 20 miles wide) is quite different from the rest of the state. It's the very southwestern-most extreme end of the very last foothills of the Appalachians, a continuation of a range of hills running SW to NE across the middle of Mississippi and getting bigger in that direction. I actually live on some of the highest ground in Lousy Anna and there's nothing remotely resembling a hill anywhere else in the state until you go about 150 miles NW. Because of this, the habitat is very different from the surrounding areas of the state. It's like I live on the tip of a peninsula stretching down from Mississippi. When sea levels were higher, it probably WAS the tip of a peninsula. But now it's effectively an island. This place is so cut up by gullies that there's not much good farmland, so that's why it's all forest. Much of adjoining Mississippi, however, is open farmland or was until recently. As a result, West Feliciana is a small clump of unique habitat about 20 miles square. There are even isolated populations of plants and animals here that normally live a few hundred miles to the north, thought to be relics that didn't move back north when the glaciers melted. And some of the normal Lousy Anna wildlife here has strange mutations, probably from inbreeding. For example, we're overrun with chipmunks, which are very rare or nonexistent in the rest of Lousy Anna. People come here from the rest of the state just to see them. We have some fox squirrels with black heads with a white stripe down the middle (we call them "skunk heads"). Many of our gray squirrels are black all over, some have red tails. And our wild turkeys come in 4 flavors: regular (brown with black markings), blue with black markings, white with black markings, and white with blue markings. And of course, panthers that don't officially exist (that giant in Liberty MS was only about 30 miles from here).

Whatever it takes to bring civilization crashing down, I support it. May the day come soon . BTW, I give lessons in making stone tools

So find it like you did the other stuff. No, I totally agree with you. Skin is elastic in both directions. But you have to agree, nonetheless, that the snake that wore this skin, even at it's current reduced length, was at a minimum at or above 6' in length and a contender for the world record you've turned up. All I can say is that it was rather bigger than that, about 7'long. But the skin is all I have left of it. The meat got eaten, the bones tossed, and my dog chewed up the rattles. And this was not the biggest canebrake I've ever seen. As for why nobody else in the world seems to know about the size of our snakes, I can offer the panther (aka cougar/moutain lion/puma). Check this out: http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/wildlife/florida-panther-id-tips Despite the official denial of their existence, and the panther officially having been extinct in Lousy Anna for about 100 years, they've never left. I've seen them occasionally all my life, both tan and black, and find their tracks out in the woods not infrequently. Several of my neighbors have shot them when they come up to their houses. In fact, a few years ago, just across the state line in Mississippi, a guy hit one with his car and it weighed 260 pounds, nearly 3 times the average size of that species. That got in the local papers and TV news, and here's a pic of it: http://philcoinms.multiply.com/journal/item/19?&show_interstitial=1&u=%2Fjournal%2Fitem But despite this, officially we still have no panthers here, let alone giant ones. My point is, don't put too much faith in the official side of things. As you can see in the 1st link above, even the Lousy Anna "Possum Police" don't believe in panthers. And for the record, I know of no serious reports of bigfoot around here. Just big snakes and big cats :).

I absolutely believe the climate is changing. It always has, from long before people existed, and always will, long after people are gone. In fact, it's becoming increasingly clear that the climate has never been what we think of as "stable", even in the short term. So what I totally disagree with is that people have anything to do with it, or have anything approaching the power to do anything about it. So if you want to worry about the climate, I'd recommend moving to a latitude that suits your preferences or buying gear to help you live where you currently are. But don't tell me I have to ruin perfectly good whiskey by mixing it with gasoline and other such nonsense, thank you very much

Almost looks like Texas weather paid a visit to Newcastle :).

Bummer. I drink to his shade.

Actually, I'm hoping that WOFF will be less deadly. My only real problem with OFF as it stands now is how the AI treats nearly every encounter as a cage fight: 2 flights enter, only the survivors of 1 flight go home. Once the AI scout commits to a fight, it only tries to disengage if it's taken so much damage it probably won't make it home anyway, much less outrun pursuit. The result is that OFF fights are way deadlier than is historically accurate. This has 2 main effects: players get way more kills in way fewer sorties than anybody in WW1, and players get shot down after fewer sorties than the historical average. What I'd like to see in WOFF's AI is scouts being able to count noses and know when the odds are badly against them. And also knowing when the energy situation is going against them, so they disengage before they're mortally wounded. And then everybody running away after a few high-speed passes, and the player suddenly finding himself alone in the empty the sky with nothing to show for it. Or 2 flights circling around some distance from each other, trying to out-climb each other, and individuals on both sides making the occasional foray into the "no-pilot's-airspace" between them like ancient heroes. This sort of stuff is what you read about in memoirs, not how 6 Nupes met 6 Albs and 2 riddled Nupes limped home leaving 10 columns of smoke behind them. NOTE: the above is for prior to 1918. I have no complaints with how the massive furballs I find in 1918 work out in OFF. And I hope the AI in WOFF keeps them going :). But what I really most want out of the AI is for it to do a Lufbery Circle in Fees and various 2-seaters. This is also something you read about a lot but never see happen in the game at present.

Hmmm... Well, here's the skin as promised. I guess these things shrink with time because when I measured it just now, it was only 5'3". I KNOW this sucker used to be 6'1" so about 1" per year of shrinkage.... But OTOH, I have consumed much stump juice since then. I just keep it rolled up, not on anything to keep it stretched out, and I only partially unroll it to use as a background for some of the arrowheads I make, to keep as few scales as possible from falling off. This is the 1st time I've had it fully unrolled since shortly after I shot it. But even at its current reduced length, this skin plus the removed parts on each end would still equal or exceed what you're claiming the world record is. You can see by the width of the front end that the shotgun took off quite a bit of its neck--it had a ways to go tapering down before the head, which itself was 2-3" long.

I read somewhere the state record was 7'2". Wikipedia isn't the source of all knowledge. It's a bit late tonight but I'll try to remember to post a pic of my skin tomorrow. PM me if I forget.

I shot one behind my house some years ago that was right at 7 feet. The shotgun vaporized the front 5-6" inches, I cut about 5-6" of rattles off the back, and the remaining skin, which I still have, is still over 6' long. I've seen a number of others locally that big, too. They're not that uncommon around here. It's just that nobody thinks of snakes as things to put in the record books, so they go unreported, like mine. However, you can find their hides nailed up in houses throughout this area. Interestingly, I've only seen 2 eastern diamondbacks in this area my whole life and neither was quite 3' long. So perhaps the canebrakes hereabouts (of which we have millions) have filled both niches and thus grow to diamondback size.

Thank you, sir. But cutting up lunch with a flake is so easy a caveman could do it . A flint flake is at least as sharp as a razor blade, often sharper. It just glides right through; the main trick is to take it slow so you don't go off in an undesirable direction. And if it gets dull, just pick up another or pop a fresh one off your core rock. I think it's pretty cool that I can, with 1 casual swing of my arm, create an edge that modern technology can only equal with a huge industrial complex. I personally think that Mankind's 1st invention ever was the flake-as-knife. Nature is full of heavy, blunt things you can use as hammers, clubs, and axes, and also full of long, pointy things you can use for projectile points, awls, needles, etc. But it has damn few sharp edges and life is SO much easier with a knife than without. And it seems that making flake knives remained the primary use of knappable stone all through the Stone Age. The sexy biface projectile points get all the attention but the old boys all seem to have had way more flake and blade cores than bifaces. As to the snake, it was a bit above the local average size but not really that big. Canebrake rattlers get a bit over 7 feet long in this area and I think they approach 8 feet in other places. The skin, however, was exceptional. The colors were as bright and bold as you ever see, so I'm thinking this snake had just shed its previous skin not long before. They're doing that around here this time of year--I've found several old skins lying around recently.

No need to imagine the scene. I've attached the least-graphic of the many pics taken of the operation. If you take a magnifying glass to that pic, you'll see the flake I'm using has a notch in the distal end. By chance, when I picked up a random flake to skin this snake with, I grabbed one I'd already used as an expedient tool. Its notch came from abrading way up inside the hafting notches of the large Archaic dart point I was making at the time. This flake came from early in the bifacing process of the point whose notches it ground and was lying between my feet at the time. This being my usual practice, no telling how long it had been lying in my debitage pile, but it was still plenty sharp. After skinning the snake, I tossed it back on my debitage pile. It keeps me warm at night thinking of how my homestead will drive future archaeologists plumb nuts. Excavations here will reveal rock from all over the US, both raw and heat-treated, and broken point types from Paleo-Indian to historic times, not to mention all sorts of microliths and utilized flakes. So I'll have some sort of vengeance from beyond the grave, which is immortality of a sort Anyway, as to cooking snakes...... Your recipe sounds delicious, but I bet all you taste is olive oil and lemon. That's one of my favorite flavor combos, but the snake itself contributes nothing. Game herbivores and scavengers taste like what they eat but game predators either have a tanginess or nothing at all. It's like they filter out all the flavors absorbed by their prey or convert it to adrenaline, which tastes tangy. For instance, crayish eat mud and whatever dead animals are rotting in their pond. So that's what they taste like without heavy doses of spices. But rattlesnakes eat mice, rats, squirrels, chipmonks, shrews, and nestlings. I've eaten all of those critters at one time or another and utterly fail to detect their flavors in snake meat. Pumperknickel has way more flavor than unseasoned snake. It's like how Maine lobsters taste only of butter and lemon and how sushi tastes only of wasabi, soy sauce, and ginger slices.

I expect an autographed copy, in return for a copy of my OFF memoir, "Fee? Fie! Ho-hum... I smell the burning flesh of an Englishman" :).

Oh yes, smoked fish is quite good. I'm a particular fan of the Arbroath Smokie, one of my ancestral foods. And the local Indians used to smoke fish a lot so I'm sure the early colonists adopted that habit if they didn't bring it with them. But it got lost somewhere along the line. Today in Lousy Anna, fish are either deep-fried or pan-fried or baked.

There are so many witty New Orleans-related answers I could give to this, but the mods would get twitterpated so I'd better not . On the serious side, pretty much everybody in Lousy Anna has a smoker but AFAIK nobody smokes fish. Now ham, ribs, chicken, and sausage, definitely. But I'm pretty sure more people in Lousy Anna smoke crack than fish. Chicken is sort of the last resort. First you have to run out of the flavorful wild stuff like venison, squirrel, goose, duck, turkey, and coon (called chaoui here). Then you have to run out of the flavorful domesticates of beef, pork, and goat (not to mention venison, goose, duck, and turkey). Then finally you have to run out of the traditional Lousy Anna stuff, all of which either have no flavor or taste nasty without massive doses of spices: crab, shrimp, crayfish, catfish, perch, crappie (called sac-a-lait here), bass, alligator, alligator gar, snake, turtle, and even possum. If you look the world over, you'll find that all the spicy ethnic quisines are the traditional food of dirt-poor peasants. The stuff they had to eat either had zero flavor was was just plain nasty, so to hide the nastiness or give some zest to otherwise drab food, they all put all sorts of spices and peppers in their meals. That's why Cajun food is spicy and why we make hot sauce down here. Do not, EVER, get Cajun food at a chain restaurant. Because they cater to national or even international palates, most of whom can't handle any pepper at all, these chains don't put any spices or peppers in their so-called "Cajun" dishes. Thus, all you get is the nastiness (or, at best, the lack of any taste at all). Mais non! As I said, the meat has no taste--it doesn't even have the minimal flavor found in chicken--which is why you need peppers and spices to have something enjoyable. Without them, eating snake is like eating moist bread. People who routinely eat spicy and hot foods have extremely sensitive palates. They can distinguish way more individual flavors than people who eat bland food and thus don't exercise their sense organs. If you want a qualified critic of food, wine, beer, tobacco, or anything else with wide spectrums of flavors missed by most folks, then get somebody who grew up exposed to such things. The least qualified are those who grew up eating bland food.

I don't think so. For example, even when I eat habaneros, the heat fails to mask the wide range of flavors in that pepper, which is why I eat them. The same is why Tabasco sauce is much more popular than all other brands; it has a very nice flavor, the others are mostly just hot.