Bullethead

Well, I figure it's late enough at night for anybody in Europe who'd remembered it to have mentioned it by now. 1 July 1916, the 1st day of the Somme. I drink to their shades.

December even. Don't forget the Tank Corps' debut happened in at the Somme and they did pretty well, considering the tanks they had were built of boiler plate, not armor, and intended only for training until the real tanks came out later. One of these vehicles, the "Flying Scotsman", still bearing the scars of battle, is in the Tank Museum at Bovington Camp. OTOH, there was also the cavalry charge on High Wood, a repetition of Balaclava. The grunts on the scene reported they'd broken through (which was true) so were told to stop and let the cavalry come up to exploit the breakthrough. But by the time the horsemen had negotiated the shell-torn morass to the new front line, the last German reserves anywhere near had been able to get there first, so it was MGs to the left of them, MGs to the right of them, MGs in front of them, vollied and thundered.

Welcome aboard Bruce! New guy buys the drinks . It's been a long, hot day so I'll need a strong margarita, on the rocks with extra salt. Anyway, be advised that the ease or difficulty of flying OFF isn't just a matter of getting a ride with benign habits. It's also a question of your workshop settings and, perhaps even more importantly, when and where you decide to fly and in which unit. I strongly discourage you from flying with less than fully realistic flight and combat settings. This is because eventually you'll want to go that way, and if you don't start that way, you'll have a lot of bad habits to unlearn. So I say go fully real on this stuff, but make it so you never die, or have "death on die roll" which is almost as safe. This is NOT being invincible/god mode (which is a separate setting); you still get shot down, you just don't die from it. If you never die, then you can try your hand at anything and find something you really like, while still seeing how easy or difficult things are with realistic flight, combat, and AI settings. So, on to the when and wheret. In WW1, airplanes were slaves of the ground forces, so both sides massed their planes wherever the big battles were raging at the time, so things are hot there but relatively quiet elsewhere. As the war goes on, however, airforces grow so the hot spots get hotter and the cold areas warm up a little. In general, however, prior to 1918, if you're not in the zone of a major ground battle, things are pretty boring. So, break out your WW1 history books, find out when and where the big battles were, and fly there, because it's pretty boring elsewhere. Note, however, that there are exactly zero late-war French 2-seaters in the game at present, and damn few early-mid-war ones, so the French/US sectors aren't much fun as the Germans for most of the war. First it's endless herds of Nupes, then its endless herds of SPADs. Flanders is were it's at. Having selecting your time and location, check the quality of the squadrons there that have the type of plane you want to fly. Avoid POOR squadrons because your wingmen won't help you at all and will die like flies. Also avoid ELITE squadrons because your wingmen will kill everybody before you can get a shot off. Go for a GOOD or AVERAGE squadron. So, now start thinking about the airplane. I second the recommendations of the Pup and Albatros D.II, perhaps even the SE5. However, I can't recommend the D.VII to a noob. Although it has no vices and is quite easy to fly, it only appears in the latter half of 1918 when the Entente has overwhelming numbers of planes that are at least as good if not better in some respects. That's the best example I can give of it not being all about the flying qualities of your plane, but also its environment. In general, you should be able to fly just about anything fairly soon. Don't worry about it. However, there are a few planes that are pure evil and should be avoided for as long as possible. These include the DH2, the E.III, the Pfalz, and perhaps even the Albatros D.III.

It was one of the ugliest planes ever to fly. It was a blasphemy to all things Nieuport. It had no right to fly as well as it did I think I'd have rather had the Martinside Buzzard. It had the rugged good looks of a P47

Here's my favorite OFF tune

But certainly German scouts have some roughly similar way to haze the noobs? Poor WM, being led on "snipe hunts" over and over

Forgive me if you already know this, but I've been chuckling at what might be an inside American joke RE the teasing about the Snipe. Over here, AFAIK we don't have any true snipes, but we have kildees (aka killdeers) which some folks call snipes, probably because they looked like the real thing to the Euro colonistis long ago. Suffice to say, there are few if any Americans who really know what a snipe is. This ignorance is taken advantage of in the Boy Scouts of America, who have enshrined a traditional bit of hazing called a "Snipe Hunt". Each camping trip, there are always new kids who have never slept outdoors before nor have ever heard of a snipe, Euro or US. So all those who've been on "Snipe Hunts" before tell the noobs that they'll be going out for them that night and answer their questions. The standard spiel is that snipes are rare nocturnal birds who live out in the deepest part of the swamp / the thickest briar patches / at the bottom fo the deepest, most steep-sided gullies, etc., whatever the worst terrain at the given campground, that few folks ever get to see them, and this campground is in one of their few remaining habitats. So, about 2400, the old hands roust out the noobs and lead them by very circuitous routes into the worst terrain available. Only the old hands have flashlights because they claim to know how to use them without spooking the snipes. Once they get the noobs way out in the boonies and thoroughly lost, they turn off their lights and disappear in the dark. True veteran snipe hunters have laid guidelines beforehand, which they follow out of the mess without need of showing a light and pull up after them, leaving the noobs to their fate. Even truer vets have described snipes as fairly large and carnivorous, and will have placed groups of noobs in near proximity so as to induce "friendly fire" incidents between them as panic sets in. As a result, the term "snipe hunt" has entered US slang as descriptive of any fool's errand. And that's what inevitably springs to mind when I see WM being teased about Snipes

I remember you, so after you've bought drinks for all of us , I'll buy one for you in return .

Robert Shaw, for one.

When I'm REALLY hungry, I use my Russian version of the TA-312 field telephone that I brought home from Kuwait. Stick a couple wires in the water, turn the crank, and instant dinner . My neighbors use a car battery and coil. Around here, come Xmas and 4 July, the fireworks stands sell "Li'l Dynamite". These are firecrackers in a red wrapper that are heavy enough to sink, and they have dynamite fuzes so they'll burn underwater. They come loose in cardboard boxes of 50 (for about $2) instead of twisted into strings like regular firecrackers, because their fuzes are too stiff for that. These are great for getting bait. The fizzing of the fuze is irresistable to minnows and baby bream, and the explosion will float all those within about 1 foot radius. Then just scoop them up and go fishing for what you're really after. This is SO much better than using a cast net, which always gets snagged on sunken branches, and cheaper than buying baitfish at the store. Plus, it's much more fun than either .

The history of medicine can be summarized as follows: Witchdoctor: "Chew this leaf." Priest (as he burns witchdoctor at the stake): "Chewing a leaf is a pagan practice. Say this prayer instead." Rennaissance Man: "God helps those who help themselves. Take this alchemical elixir." Age of Reason Man: "Religion is bunk and that elixir is poison. Your problem is you've got too much blood in you. Let me open your veins." 19th Century Man: "It turns out that you really need blood after all. Try this mix of opium and cocaine." Early 20th Century Man: "Those drugs just make you a hopless addict. Drink this radium water instead." Later 20th Century Man: "It turns out radiation is actually bad for you. Take this antibiotic." 21st Century Man: "All germs are now immune to antibiotics. Chew this leaf." This is something I'd never do, even with a mail gauntlet. I'm more than happy to watch others do it, however, because I always enjoy it when idiots remove themselves from the gene pool.

Yup, but not as much as I used to. I have a small pond behind my house with lots oif bream and bass in it, and I catch them periodically. Always let them go, however. When I want to eat something, I go down to the Mississippi River with a friend or 2 and we run a trot line for catfish. I also fish for crayfish with a pole instead of a net or trap. Does that count? It's not the most efficient way of doing it but it works, and the time it takes allows for the consumption of many beers . Yeah, your part of the world is being overrun with invasive Asian carp wiping out everything else. It's so bad in places that that "River Monsters" show covered them. Huge schools of 10-20# carp all erupting out of the water in panic as a boat goes by, I hear they've killed a number of people that way. Folks get whacked in the head by a heavy fish, fall overboard, and drown. I think in places there are "kill all the carp you want" days to try and thin the herd. I saw in the paper today that they caught one up near Chicago, past the barriers they'd put in place, so now it's only a matter of time before they infest the Great Lakes. But killing gars ain't right, IMHO. They're harmless things that aren't that good to eat for the work it takes to clean them, and they need to reach a certain size before they're useful as a source of arrowheads (but at which point you only need 1 per year tops). Besides, they can get friggin' huge if you let them, and it's cool having fish that big around. Amen to that. Not to mention how dangerous childbirth was just a few generations back. Or how many kids died early. All my grandparents were born about 1900 when it was common to have 8-10 children and expect only 1/2 to 2/3 of them to reach adulthood.

Actually, the use of copper by North American Indians predates agriculture, so there's a case of Paleolithic folks using it. Up around the Great Lakes, there are a number of places where native copper (as in not ore, but the pure stuff) occur on the surface as nuggets, from multi-ton boulders down to gravel-sized things. Apparently the glaciers scraped it out of Canada somewhere and left it behind when they melted. One of the Archaic cultures (as in thousands of years ago, between the Paleoindian mammoth hunters and the Woodlands semi-agriculturalists) in that area is even called the "Coppersmith", because they made copper projectile points (although to suppliment their stone stuff). The idea didn't catch on because few subsequent North American cultures used it as weapons until historical times, when they cut up tea kettles for arrowheads. However, pre-Contact, copper was fairly frequently used as pressure-flaking tool for making stone points, especially for notching them. Everything with very narrow notches was almost certainly done with a copper tool, because antler just won't file down that narrow and retain enough strength to pull a flake off. Needless to say, it seems the Indians around the Great Lakes got rich trading little bits of copper to the other Indians. Check this out: https://www.msu.edu/~oberg/copper/funfacts.html There's a well-accepted theory (sadly, I can't remember the author or paper, but it came out in 1975) that as civilization has advanced, the amount of free time available to its members has drastically reduced. Think about it. How much time do any of us have to read this forum or play off, what with the constant demands of our surrounding society? But a hunter-gatherer only needed to kill a deer maybe once a week to feed his family. The rest of the time he was kicking back under a shade tree smoking peyote, drinking pulque, and pondering the Great Mysteries. And if he got bored with that, he could indulge his artistic talents in the mediums he was most familiar with. In North America, there's a definite decrease in artistry in flint points over time, probably corresponding to people becoming more settled, their society becoming more complex, etc, so they had less time devote to such things. Plus, other mediums became the outlet for artistic urges . The namesake points of the Clovis and Folsum cultures require much more skill than anything that came later, and most Archaic points are more technically difficult than the later Woodlands points. It eventually reached the stage where the most common points weren't any better than some of my 1st attempts. They certainly would get groceries and kill the enemy, but they weren't something you'd bury with the chief for his use in the afterlife. They still made some very fine points for the latter purpose, but most of them apparently weren't ever used in real life. Well, I did mention garfish as a source of ready-made arrowheads Thanks, but I'm a total noob with only 1.5 years experience. One of the founding fathers of modern knapping (Steve Behrnes) lives near me, and I'm not worthy to sharpen his pressure flaker. He put 5 kids through school by selling his work for tens of thousands of dollars a piece. He makes stuff you'd bury with the chief of all chiefs. On my good days, I make stuff that you'd bury with a minor noble or hero of purely local renown. Mostly I must make grocery-getters. The most I've ever sold a point for is $50. That's hugely cool. I've never found any obsidian here, despite the Indians' trade network going down to Mexico where it's as common as dirt. I agree, I'm sure it's last owner was quite proud of it. He probably carried it in his medicine bag for its obviously powerful juju. There are many examples of historic period Indians further west putting truly ancient Clovis and Folsum points in their medicine bags that way. The cherry red color is a result of heat treating. The rock starts out as a dull, light brown or tan, which is pretty much unworkable. I've only seen a very few authentic points made out of it and they're all total clunkers, nearly as thick as they are wide. But when you cook it, it turns a deep, dark red, and becomes MUCH more workable, capable of making high-quality thin points. These are more common than the raw variety, but still rare compared to imported rock, due to the rarity of local rocks big enough to be worth the trouble. There are quite a few folks who do this. I'd use a toggle harpoon point made of bone. Thin enough to melt the glaciers, apparently I'm sure they had politicians. Politics are part of any social group. Folks who say they don't play politics instead really just play politics very badly. And politicians are all lawyers, and have always had other lawyers working for them. Even Vikings had lawyers. Not that I'm in favor of either breed. Humanity will never be free until the last lawyer is strangled with the entrails of the last politician. May that day come soon!! . Now, let's get back to fishing

I'm nowhere near being able to compete in a WAA meet, but I figure I could survive with one. I usually come within about 1 foot of my point of aim at 25m, so I figure I could kill deer if I had to, maybe even large dogs or coyotes. Likely I'd have to chase down wounded animals but I'd probably get them. I'd be afraid to try it on a wild hog, though. I figure I'd only piss it off and then it would eat me . Always nice to meet another Paleolithic person :). Because I'm throwing a lot for target practice, I need a point that won't break easily. Thus, right now I'm using socketed copper points. I made these out of thin-walled 1" copper tubing about 2" long. I made the socket by splitting this about 1/2way lengthwise and crushing it in around the shaft with a vise. Then I crushed the other 1/2 of it flat in the vise, hammered it thin, and ground it down to a triangular shape. Then I crimped the edges over themselves to seal up the opening between the 2 faces of the blade. This will go about 2" into an oak tree Down here in Lousy Anna's armpit, it's solid mud all the way down until you get to Hell, where a thin layer of it has been baked to brick just above the fires. The only rock is a light brown flint, but it's all creek pebbles, most of which are too small to use. The local Indians did use it when they found one big enough, but they had to heat treat it first, which turned it a beautiful deep cherry red. Such points are very rare. Almost all points found here are made of rock imported from far away. I figure the yankee Indians came down here for Mardi Gras and paid for their stay with flint . For the most part, however, it seems that the local Indians made due with bone and antler points, or used garfish scales, which are natural arrowheads. In my own knapping, I also have to use imported rock. These days, I work mostly with Georgetown Flint from Texas and various types of obsidian. I've got a gallery of my work here. I get most of my rock from Neolithics.com

They are very similar. When I fly D.VIIs, I enjoy fighting SE5s the most because while the planes do have significant differences in some areas, they're so close in most others that it's all about pilot skill and instictive ACM. The SE5 has a huge amount of dihedral, the whole purpose of which is to keep the airplane level. Thus, you need a lot of aileron to overcome the massive inherent stability.

Factor 4000 in the UK and Ostfriesland?!?!?!?!? :yikes:Whine whine whine:boredom: Listen, lads. I live in Lousy Anna's armpit and yesterday was the inappropriately named Midsummer Day. You know what that means? It means the effective Equator right now is directly on the very appropriately named Tropic of (Skin) Cancer, at a bit over 23^ N. My latitude is just a hair over 30^N. Most of the day, nothing here casts a noticeable shadow, what with dawn at 0500-ish and it not fully dark until about 2100. It's been hitting 95^F and 70-90% humidity with clear blue skies and absolutely zero wind for the last couple of weeks, unless one of the WIDELY scattered thunderstorms appears overhead. Then you get a very gentle breeze, it drops down to about 88^F but the humidity goes up to 100% so it actually feels worse, like a dog panting on you, and it usually doesn't rain. Most days, we hit 90^F about 1100 and it doesn't get below that until about 0330 the next day. But at 0700, it's still 85^F. Anyway, I've got the skin of my UK and Friesland ancestors so I don't tan much to speak of, mostly just burn and freckle. I spend quite a bit of time outside, and I only use SPF 15 sunblock. That's more than enough to avoid problems. I haven't gotten sunburned in years. In fact, Sunday morning when it was nice and cool (as in a bit less than 90^F), I went out for a couple hours to test and adjust some new atlatl darts I'd just made. So much sweat ran down my arms that the whole pinky edge of both my hands pruned up, ISYN, but I didn't burn. So don't give me that Factor 4000 crap when you all live up there so close to the Arctic . Remember that commercial in the 1st RoboCop movie where they were advertising massive sunblock? That was a product of those times. BTW, every day the sun makes new ozone. It's unavoidable.

Yup, I had a great Fathers' Day, thanks for asking. I made it through yet another year without a paternity suit

I usually average 8-10% against fighters, as in hale fellows well met where most of the time I'm getting non-optimal snapshots. When I fly as German in Bloody April or thereabouts, I shoot considerably better because I can sit back behind helpless, unescorted Quirks, take careful aim, and make every shot count. Such pilots typically average 15-20% overall, brought down by trying to hit those pesky Nupes and Pups.

Here: http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax Be sure to get the tutorials there while you're at it. They don't help you do OFF-related things per se, but they do give you a handle on the interface and some fo the things Gmax can do.

I've carried at least 1 weapon of some sort every day of my life since I was about 6 and was 1st allowed to walk down the street to visit friends. I was also raised to be courteous to all but to have a plan to kill everybody I meet if need be. Today I had yet another good example of why this a necessary thing. Had either of the victims involved been raised like me or by me, the outcome might well have been different. Here's the story.... Most of my region is rural, and by that I mean miles of forest with isolated houses, but here and there are modern subdivisions surrounded by woods, like villages. One of these is for rich folks, all huge houses around a golf course. About noon today, in broad daylight, an 8-year old boy was riding his bicycle along one of the streets near the edge of this subdivision, with his mother walking beside him. And this homeless bum, who'd been camping in the adjacent woods for a while but which the blinders-on locals had not seen as a potential threat, suddenly jumped out of the bushes and slashed the kid's throat. Just like that. We did CPR but it was hopeless from before we got there. We did, however, manage to hunt down the bastard in the surrounding woods but, unfortunately, I didn't catch him myself. A deputy flushed him out and thus he's still alive, so now I've got to feed the SOB and pay for all his death penalty appeals for years until such time as the state finally does what we should have done out in the woods this afternoon and claimed he resisted arrest. Such a f*cking waste of time and tax money on such a piece of sh*t. I've killed hundreds of people and adding him to the list would actually have helped quiet the other ghosts, with whom I had no personal or ethical quarrel. This is why I'm a fireman instead of a cop. But this way we at least got to interrogate him, for what what was worth. He said nothing you wouldn't expect. When asked why he did it, he said, "Because I could." He could do it because he knew that most folks don't go around prepared constantly for instant life-or-death situations. So if you're not so prepared, and if your kids aren't, either, I advise you to change that. Crazy f*ckers do attack you out of a blue sky sometimes, and even people you know and love sometimes suddenly snap without warning. People are the most dangerous predators this planet has ever evolved, so you can't ever trust them. Never take your eyes off them and always be ready to fight for your life at the drop of a hat. Probably you'll never be in such a situation, but you never know and it COULD happen every time you go out just to pick up the newspaper in front of your house. Anyway, I'm currently well into my "Critical Incident Stress Debriefing" with Dr. Jack Daniels. He always gets me over things like this. Be safe out there, and by safe I mean ARMED AND READY.

The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup! :drinks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzHqNVgMkCg

Then for your peace of mind, I strongly suggest that you never get a police scanner. Then you'll never know just how many whackjobs get busted just outside your perception every day, even in places where "nothing ever happens". Where do you think those on the lam from the crime cesspools run to when the heat is on? The nearest city to me is 1500 people, yet 45 miles away is the largest city in the state. Our cops have to take down fleeing murderers from the big city every week or so. And we even had our own resident serial killer a few years ago. The bottom line is, when the police are only 5 minutes away, that time starts counting ONLY when and IF somebody sees the AIDS-infected serial rapist kicking down your daughter's door. And in many neighborhoods, folks won't even call the cops for that, having become enured to casual violence and all sorts of other stuff going on around them every day. Bottom line is, the law will NOT save you. The cops are pretty good at catching perps afterwards, but that does you exactly zero good when you and/or your kids are dead or maimed for life as a result of what happened before the cavalry arrived. IOW, the ONLY thing that will save you is your own readiness for worst-case scenarios. If you're cool with playing the odds for yourself and your kids, then by all means keep your blinders on and get slaughtered like sheep when the wolf breaks into your fold. I mean, it doesn't happen THAT often, even in bad areas. It's probably a safe bet. But is it a bet you really want to take? I mean, it's not something you get a Mulligan on.

I feel "relatively safe" every day myself. But that's because even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil because I am the meanest SOB in the valley. I didn't mean you should carry a gun. But there are beaucoup other weapons even you oppressed Europeans can carry legally even through airports. For instance, wear a belt with a heavy buckle. This is useful not only for beating folks upside the head, but for tying them up afterwards if you somehow fail to kill them. Or use a walking cane made out of sturdy stainless steel tubing, whether you have a real limp or not. These are what I rely on when I have to ride on airplanes, and they back up the heavy lockblade knife I always carry in other situations. Plus, of course, I can fight with my hands and feet well enough to fear nobody with a knife even if I have no weapon. I myself never carry a gun, although I have several within reach as I type this. DO NOT try to break into my house . That's what the point of my 1st post was, ALWAYS expect trouble. Even in an idyllic suburban community in a small place where nothing ever happens. Over a few million years, people evolved in small groups as the top predators. In comparison, the last few thousand years of being "civilized", living in large groups relatively peacefully, are completely against what our genes think is proper. IOW, everybody is always under immense stress to conform to behaviors that are contrary to their natural tendencies. Not everybody can take the strain. So be courteous to all so as not to provoke them,, but still always be ready to kill them all because you never know when they might need it.

Well, let's hope the Celtics can pull it out. Otherwise, I'll be reading the Boston obits with great trepidation . Of course, even if the Celtics go down, it can't be anywhere near as traumatic as the Bruins' epic fail last month..... Geez, I'm glad my teams have never choked that badly