(Captioned a photo – I rented a Harley Davidson to cruise around Oahu)
Coming Attractions on Virtual Mirage
There will soon be a mobile search engine app that you can download onto your Android or i-Phone to conduct anonymous searches on the go.
Quarantine
During the Black Death (not to be confused with the present Chinese Plague), incoming ships were forced to wait for forty days before disgorging crew and cargo to prevent possible infection. The Italian word for forty is ‘quaranta’, which is where we get the word, ‘quarantine’, in popular use today.
The bubonic plague swept through the known world in the 14th century and killed between 25% and 60% of the population in Europe, depending where you were. Florence, Italy, lost about half of its population. Because the plague killed so many of the working population, wages rose due to the demand for labor. Some historians see this as a turning point in European economic development
Reliability
There was some discussion here a few days ago of why somebody spoiling for a fight would carry a brace or two of pistols, earlier. The “Golden age of Piracy” had passed by the end of the 1700’s because Spanish treasure galleys were no longer lumbering from the new world to the old, with hulls full of precious metal and gems.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the reliability of flintlock pistols remained a problem. They were risky primarily because of the priming powder (it would get wet, or fall out of the pan, or the flint wouldn’t spark properly), but under the heading of “risking is better than regretting,” they were carried in the absence of another option. If you were not adept at swordplay, you needed something to fall back on. Traditional holsters as we think of them were not popular. Gun pockets on horses for cavalry pistols/horse pistols put a larger barreled handgun at easy reach.
This is one contemporary adaptation in the Muslim world.
A pistol, once fired, usually ended up being a club, which is why the butts were capped with metal. The holster pictured above is called a kuburluk, and it’s slung around the neck and over the shoulder of the wearer. It holds one brace of pistols. Depending on the wealth of the wearer, a second brace would be added over the other shoulder, and usually a sword at the belt. (circa 1800)
Chinese Billions
Here’s an interesting article on Chinese investments and a failure to divest, from the Daily Caller. You can make of it what you will. It appears to be legitimate journalism, which I admit is a rarity. Last year, Hunter Biden, son of the presumptive Democrat nominee and sort of a miserable sop of humanity, agreed to resign from BHR Partners, a Chinese firm where he sits as a member of the Board. But he didn’t resign. He’s still there, financially entwined with the company.
To the extent that Joe Biden’s family has benefited in specific ways from his tenure in the US Senate and as vice president, it’s difficult to know where his family’s fortune and his are separated. Adding to that the shady deals with Ukraine (and Russia) Energy investments and billions in ‘investments’ with Chinese firms, it’s difficult to know who really owns creepy, corrupt, senile old Joe Biden.
Arcadia, California
I know that video is 100% accurate, and thought that I’d share it. The real estate prices (bought with folding money – hard cash) are just a return of US$ that we shipped to China.
Doing undercover police work in Arcadia and other cities like it in Los Angeles and Orange Counties requires that the police drive late model Mercedes and BMW’s so they don’t stand out. Two white guys in a 4 door Ford are too obvious.
I like learning the “Entomology” Mr. Larry (aka. Italian 40 days = Quarantine). Is the search engine “Live”.
Jake
The search engine is live. Try it.
That’s one thing I like about coming here. I learn some of the little things like the origin of the term quarantine.
I have some experience with flintlocks and while they’re fun to shoot, I would not want to have to rely on one. That aside, the reliability of one seems to be mostly in the quality of the lock and how good a flint is used. Hang fires were always a possibility as well so it was a good idea to hold on target if there wasn’t an immediate boom. I’ve fired some that would go off with little or no hesitation nearly every time. Others might take a try or two. Genuine black powder is mandatory, 4F for the pan, though I’ve seen guns that would ignite reliably with 3F. That made it easy for the owners. One horn for both the main and priming charge.
I shoot (and deer hunt) with a Brown Bess. And one of the reasons that I do is that it gives the deer a serious advantage. I have to worry about the priming pan (I use 3F), the condition of the flint, and I aim between the rear tang screw and the bayonet lug. The Brown Bess is a volley fire weapon, not an aimed weapon. Traditionally you pointed it in the general direction of an enemy line and there was the hope that somewhere around 5% of the shots fired in the volley would hit. The real work was done with a bayonet during the days of the Brown Bess. Once you fixed bayonets, you couldn’t reload.
Having said that, and keeping in mind that thirty or forty yards is about the limit of accurate fire with the Brown Bess (with a lot of practice), if you hit something with that 75 caliber patched round ball, it’s going down.
Because it’s a smooth bore, even with a solid patch, it’s going to bounce down the barrel and slide out without any spin – sort of like throwing a knuckleball in baseball.
I’ve had the Brown Bess since I was twenty five…so it’s not new. But it’s not an original Brown Bess, either. It’s a reproduction gun. I do have a faithfully reproduced sling and a lunger bayonet that I think was made in India.
The video you supplied was bad enough, but the next one that youtube auto-loaded was maybe even more “disconcerting”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZs2i3Bpxx4
And their influence in our academic centers is just plain wrong.
Motivating a resistance to this without appearing to going full racist is going to be a challenge.
There is a difference between being Chinese and part of the wide-ranging Chinese Communist Party structure, and going forward, people will need to understand that. We can start by blocking university admission from anyone who is from (or was from – moved to Vancouver or some place) the People’s Republic of China. I’m not suggesting that they are all spies, but if they are from there, they are influenced by communist party cadre from there.
At the moment, almost all electronic circuitboard components are only made in China. Silicon Valley, for all its hype, doesn’t concern itself with the grubby manufacture of those essential/critical components. All that MUST change if we are to be free.
All interesting to read. Our dependence on China is a scary thing.
It must change.
Interesting post. The matched set of pistols and holster looked like they were a capture/bring back. The pairing is another reason a ‘lot’ of the ‘dueling’ pistols were a set, one is none, two is one… Re the Chinese, yep fact. Much like the Saudis up in northern California, especially around Stanford. Money talks, always…
Will the US change its ways and reject the Chinese gold? Or is it racist to refuse to accept a bribe from China (or Saudi Arabia)?
I’ll take that house there … kick that riff raff out.
Circa 1995, we were often in Vancouver, B.C. The locals complained bitterly (in a restrained Canadian way) about the rich Chinese and they way they drove.
I pulled out of a gas station in Garden Grove, CA one day and was on the curb/threshold to the road, and a Vietnamese guy driving a Rice Rocket with a Whale Tail crossed the road, jumped the curb and slammed through two rows of gas pumps.
“Nothing to see here, move along, fire department is accustomed to dealing with this” is what the 911 dispatcher told me.
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