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I have been reading The Japanese Sword Column and thought it may be of niche interest to other Soylentils. It is written by Paul Martin, a noted British expert of Japanese swords. From the introduction:
Along with cherry blossoms and Mount Fuji, the Japanese sword has become one of the enduring symbols of Japan. It has experienced centuries of warfare, evolved through Mongol invasions, survived the introduction of the musket, the end of the samurai era, modernization, and confiscation and destruction by the Allied forces following World War II. They are an anachronism in modern society, yet they continue to be made. They are an integral part of Japanese culture.
Today, I feel very fortunate that we have access to Japanese swords and can observe the artistry of blades that were previously only accessible by Japan's ancient military and social elites.
I particularly enjoyed the July 25th article, The Changes in the Shape of the Japanese Sword. The articles are short, update infrequently and have plenty of pictures of museum-quality swords. A good fit for those with a casual interest in the subject.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:54AM (35 children)
"They are an anachronism in modern society"
An armed society is a polite society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:12AM (15 children)
The obvious rebuttal is Texas.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:34AM (10 children)
You've never been to Texas, I take it. Not being polite down there will get your ass handed to you by whoever's handy to do so.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @01:59PM (8 children)
No it won't. The most it would draw is a withering, "Well, Bless Your Heart!"
The rest of that Texas bravado stuff is a myth.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:12PM (7 children)
I dunno where you get your ideas about this but you're simply wrong. I grew up around and currently work with Texans. Three out of any four of them will happily and immediately knock you on your ass for being a shithead in their presence.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:55PM (6 children)
They're all hat and no cattle. It's posturing for posturing's sake, the same way Italians in New York posture about how tough they are. They're not tougher than anyone else. Up close and in reality they're the same as anyone else, in that some are tough and most are not.
Texans are the same way. I spent summers in El Lago near Houston as a teenager. My uncle was a chemist for Shell at their big refinery near Galveston. We had a lot of opportunity to explore the state from Corpus Christi to Beaumont. (Of course here's the juncture where you reply that all the Texans from Corpus Christi to Houston to Beaumont are pussies and fake Texans, and that only real Texans live in El Paso or Crawford or something, right?) In all that time and area I never saw any sign that Texans are tougher or more resilient than anyone else, but rather enmeshed in cocoons of big cars, big houses, and big churches with air conditioning that insulate them from anything rough and tough.
When I think of Texans, I think "coddled."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:49PM (3 children)
Did I say they were tougher or more resilient than anybody else? No. I proclaim them to be pussies them yearly when UT plays OU. I said they were less tolerant of rudeness, which is absolutely true. It's a quite common trait around the south and southwest but I think Texas probably takes the blue ribbon in the "mind your manners or spit teeth" contest.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @07:11PM (2 children)
As New Yorkers would say, it's a "schtick." For normal Americans, it's a "rep." They like to play it up, but there's little to it. Once they might have been intrepid, when they were fighting the Mexican army and founding the Republic of Texas, but they're as fat and pampered as the rest of the country now.
Also toughness comes in many forms. I've met little old ladies in Brooklyn who'd cut the balls off your tough-talking Texans in a twinkling. They'd smile as they did it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @08:39PM (1 child)
Did you even read what I just said? I specifically excluded toughness and yet there you go harping on like I was talking about it. Strawman much?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:18AM
Um, no. Why do you ask?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:56PM (1 child)
I'm not going to argue about where the "real Texans" live, but I've met enough of them. They have a lot in common with the mountain people in Wyoming, Montana, and various other people who live away from the big cities. Yeah, those backwood people are tough. They don't survive if they aren't tough.
All the same, I'll take Buzzard's side on the single issue he has raised. If you're a rude, arrogant ass, Texas is one of the last places you want to run at the mouth.
I'll also give you a free anecdote. I've spent more time than I would have liked to spend in and around Dallas. Got to talking with one of those old hard nosed ranchers north of Dallas once. I asked him if there were any real Texans left in the Dallas-Fort worth area. He and I agreed that there were probably a few dozen left, but they were hard to find among all the Yankees living there now.
Oh yeah. All hat and no cattle? That reminds me of another rancher I met southwest of Dallas. A bit less than 500 acres, and not one single cow. But, he had something like a quarter million turkeys. Turkeys. I couldn't believe my eyes. Somehow, "ranch" just didn't seem appropriate to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:21AM
If you EVER dare to compare Texan "All Hat, No Cattle" Urbane Cowboys to Montanans again, you will indeed have your ass handed to you! Wyoming, well that is just Texas with an actual winter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @03:56AM
Nor you, I suppose, given that your ass is still attached?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:38AM (3 children)
Maybe you can cite all the public shootings in Texas? Luby's, you say? I invite you to watch a video, to hear precisely WHY no one in Luby's was armed that day. Listen to the lady, carefully. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sEYGcXSmpQ [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:52AM (2 children)
Well there's Waco. Oh, wait, that was government murderers not civilian murderers.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:53AM (1 child)
Speaking of Government Here's a manual on how to make a full-auto sub machinegun.
https://mega.nz/#!hPhQULhJ!upgCjT1m5oWRBk4PPGTaX9pyjbtn6KXHacYCQPStxv4 [mega.nz]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @06:00PM
The file you are trying to download is no longer available.
This could be due to the following reasons:
The file has been removed because of a ToS/AUP violation.
Invalid URL - the link you are trying to access does not exist
The file has been deleted by the user.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:19AM (13 children)
Is it correct to apply that principle to a feudal society?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:35AM (12 children)
Why, yes, it is correct.
How do you think royalty survived all those hundreds of years? They denied the serfs access to weapons. In the land of the blind, a person with sight can be king. In an unarmed society, an armed man can make himself the king. In an armed society, everyone is a king.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Tuesday October 10 2017, @03:27AM (9 children)
You will never find a lone wolf becoming King, my friend. It is always a band of armed men led by the would-be king.
Also you will find that tactics and weapons are very important, Hernan Cortes conquered Mexico and Pizarro, Peru with a small band of soldiers who had better weapons and tactics than the natives.
Someone already mentioned Waco, what good were their guns against the government agents? Are you willing to bet your shotgun against an armored carrier? Are you willing to bet your assault rifle against a Hellfire?
Even with guns, we're doomed against the government, unless we rise by the hundreds of thousands and are willing to die by the thousands. Think about it.
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:34AM (1 child)
If we Do rise up to die -
Can I use a frenh small-sword?
Democracy, is thankfully more plastic than that.
Most of the time, non-violent protests on a massive scale only result in getting gassed, or beatings about the head if involved.
Ha! https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/facts-are-nonviolent-resistance-works [ncronline.org]
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:37AM
French. French small-sword. Similar to the modern Epee' with the triangular blade. Alas - no museum replicas for triangular blades - yet.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:04AM (2 children)
Cortez had the advantage of being foreign - he was granted access to people he wouldn't have been if he had been local.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 10 2017, @08:07AM (1 child)
You mean, like Melania?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @06:25PM
Some people diss rap.
But some of the best rappers do insane shit, like history lesson songs.
You think I jest?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M7MZh_bvjg [youtube.com]
Learn about Cortez, and how he tricked the Mayans... through song*!
*unless you're a schmuck who says rap aint song, in which case, whatever, just go listen
Thank me after! :)
-AC#1
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:13PM (1 child)
Waco? There were no soldiers at Waco. The people in the compound relied on the walls to protect them. Poor fools - they should have had at least a field engineer among them, to explain that the walls were no defense, whatsoever. In fact, events proved the walls to be a greater danger than anything. If those people were relying on guns, there was remarkably little shooting from those guns.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:03PM
Kind of the point. They weren't looking to hurt anybody. They got massacred for wanting the means to defend themselves.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:13PM (1 child)
I don't know much about the particulars of Pizarro's conquest of Peru, but Cortes didn't manage it because he had better weapons and tactics than the natives. He got incredibly lucky with the timing of the myth of Quetzalcoatl and his arrival, which forestalled a vigorous reaction from the Aztec empire. Cortez was also seized upon by the Tlaxcala as a way to shake off the Aztec yoke of oppression. The Aztecs demanded huge numbers of human sacrifices from their vassals, which does not for a happy, secure empire make. So Cortez's numbers and military power were swiftly augmented by his new native allies. Even then the Aztecs would have kicked all their asses if they had tucked in and attacked. Instead they weren't sure what to do because of the legend and portends that kept the Aztec hierarchy off-balance, and they let Cortez walk into Tenochtitlan where they promptly imprisoned Moctezuma. Even then, the Aztecs rallied and drove the Spanish off and would have defeated the invasion, except diseases unwittingly brought by the Spaniards broke the Aztec resistance under Cuauhtemoc.
So a lot of things broke the Spaniards way. They got really lucky. But they did not do it with superior arms and tactics.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @06:28PM
Cortez *knew* about the religious timing, and planned critical events around it. Isn't this tactics? To say the equivalent of, "on xmas day they'll all be celebrating, so we can attack then, when they have not girded?"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 10 2017, @04:30AM (1 child)
He was King because God Said So.
That's why he could sleep in a tent surrounded by thousands of armed peasants, who were certainly going to get hurt while he watches tomorrow's pointless ego battle, and not get turned into a porcupine.
The King's personal guard was no match for his army turning on him. It's not the weapons that kept him on the throne.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @06:32PM
Yeah. Those peasants? Turns out a huge number were Lords. Ie. stakeholders. They could even treat war as business, directly by ransoming captures, and indirectly by taking tribute or ransacking conquered people, or being installed in 'new' baronies etc. in conquered (nb. not 'occupied'!) lands. Even in the flattest king-led army, there would have been a tier of well equipped warriors and below them their men-at-arms or footpads. Kings didn't conscript off the field, "you, you and you, take up swords and follow me."
(Score: 4, Informative) by moondrake on Tuesday October 10 2017, @02:45PM (4 children)
1) Japanese culture and language puts a lot of emphasize on politeness, quite the opposite of the US and the English language.
2) Arms were (and are) _heavily_ regulated, with guns being outlawed and only the samurai class having the right to bear arms (which became quite ceremonial until even that was abolished during the restoration).
I know you have an agenda to push, but this is the living example of something opposite to what you say. If I did not know better I would think you are being ironic.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 10 2017, @05:41PM (3 children)
So, you're saying that Japan has intentionally re-established it's caste system, and only the Samurai are permitted to own these swords?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:26AM (2 children)
No, Runaway, that is not what he is saying. Try reading it again. Or perhaps, have one of your kids read it to you, and explain what it means. This is not the first time you have had this difficulty with reading comprehension. Is this a recent development, or have you always been semi-literate? If it is recent, you might want to have a medical professional check it out. Could be a sign of early onset dementia.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 11 2017, @01:23PM (1 child)
Alright, child - explain this to me: "2) Arms were (and are) _heavily_ regulated, with guns being outlawed and only the samurai class having the right to bear arms"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 12 2017, @06:40PM
arms are not only guns.
samurai could wear weapons, including swords and knives and bows.
samurai were DEFINITELY not afforded the right to bear firearms!