A little known but fascinating fact about Etienne de Silhouette is that the same day he discovered his shadow-tracing technique, he dined with his dear friends, Henri Bouillabaisse and Elizabeth Vodka-Tonic, just moments after they had left the salon of Madame de Bas Relief, so that they might avoid an unpleasant meeting with Hermann von Schizo-Phrenia. and his disgusting nephew, Viktor Diarrhea, and hulking manservant, Carbuncle.

Never in history was there another such situation involving so many persons whose names became words. You can look it up.

You're not bad at coming up with the misconceptions, about only a couple of which I might quibble. But for the reasons we believe them I see that you used the SWAG method: Scientific Wild Ass Guess. Bad show.

All you did with your blatant and near-baseless speculation was tell us more about your own biases and blind spots than "ours".

Correct. See my comment, #158.

I think you and your "repliers" are essentially correct. See my comment at #158 (I think).

You're right. See my comment, about # 158.

Nice try on "Bite the Bullet" but not close. First, the process you described was for muzzle-loading black powder weapons which the British discarded for brass-cased ammunition by about 1870. As to the process you suggest, simplified it required the shooter to put powder down the barrel, followed by the projectile, either a round lead ball or a conical lead bullet.

To save time, the cartridges were packaged with the powder and bullet together in a paper container roughly the size of 2 "C" batteries stacked one on top of the other. To load, the shooter simply tore the paper package with his teeth, poured the powder down the barrel, followed it with some paper, then the lead bullet, then some more paper to keep it all packed in, then took the remaining bit of powder and primed his weapon.

There was really no danger in the process which was taught the soldiers, because the primer which fired the charge was not loaded until the soldier was done loading everything in the barrel. That way his fingers, hands and face weren't near the barrel, and any discharge wouldn't endanger the shooter.

Now, back to the REAL origin of "bite the bullet". Think about what it connotes: gathering one's courage and being tough. Which was exactly what one had to do when having wounds tended to by 18th,19th and early-20th-century sawbones, who often amputated damaged limbs. The process was usually done without anesthetic, and was terrifically painful. So to try to maintain a "soldierly" demeanor and not cry out, the wounded often had to bite down on something which wouldn't break their teeth, like leather...or the soft lead bullets they carried.

Even when cartridges evolved to the point the bullet was fixed into a brass case which held the powder, bullet and a primer, the soldiers could still bite down on the bullet, or simply pull the bullet from the case and bite on that alone. But the brass never entered the mouth because it was hard enough to break a tooth, contrary to the picture you attached.

Heh. I couldn't read the washed-out printing on the dryboard where the vid-maker identified himself. I think that's hilarious...and perfect justice for self-promoters who intentionally mislead people for their own advancement.

Just think of it, video-maker whatever-your-name-is: you came up with this hoax; hired somebody to pull it off; burned a lot of bridges in lying to people about what it was just so you could get the viral ball rolling; and when the truth is revealed, the only person whose name is known....and the only person who benefits...is Elyse Porterfield. Hilarious.

Which is probably just as well, since if people knew who you were you'd have to change your name anyway. Jerk.

Well, here's one site I won't ever have to visit again....

Not bad, although I don't think I'd include "Ran"'s castle battle scene, at least not by any traditional standards of movie combat. It is a breathtaking spectacle, no doubt. But while it is highly stylized and :big", there is very little actual combat. The mounted spearmen and bowmen ride and ride and ride. And gunmen advance and shoot, but its all rather sterile. I know that taking Kurosawa to task about not giving us enough realism (about samurai fighting!) is like making such a point against Picasso - neither were aiming at anything so simple and straightforward. Still, medieval combat between armies consisting in large part of samurai were incredibly bloody, close-quarters, hand-to-hand affairs, even with the advent of firearms. For all the mass of soldiers, they never really closed.

Instead, how about any of the fights in "Seven Samurai"? Particularly the final battle of reckoning. To me that's samurai combat, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Another movie I would include for its realism and success in conveying how violent combat is, is "Platoon". Although I truly detest Oliver Stone as a liar and egomaniac of homeric proportions, he got the feel of Vietnam combat right. The last scenes of the camp being overrun by NVA is terrifying, and captures the feeling of panic and horror when soldiers under duress realize there is nowhere to go, and that they must fight or die. But Stone captures another aspect of combat which is much rarer, but nonetheless true. He accurately depicts how Charlie Sheen come under the sway of the ecstasy of war. Sheen experiences the "wolf rising in the heart" that Teddy Roosevelt described, and engages in a rapturous one-man counterattack. He sees, for a moment, the terrible beauty of violence, and gives himself over totally to killing - when he no longer fears dying, and instead experiences ecstasy in dealing out death. It happens, and to average guys who would never think such a thing possible. And Stone captured it.

hee hee! Office Space is positively brilliant, and studio-quality editing! But I can't believe Samir's "You are a very bad man!" wasn't used....

Hmmm. Apparently "Difficult" means "takes awhile to finish" and "contains a lot of history and.or factual stuff" as well as being thematically complex, multiple-layered and deeply symbolic. How else to explain the inclusion of "War and Peace" and "Foucault's Pendulum". Both are great books, both require strict attention (W&P for plot and characters, FP for dozens of interlocking threads of esoterica); but each is fairly straight-forward and plot-driven, and is readily understood and enjoyed.

A better example, IMO, would be "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon, which is a trip through space and history, where time is flexible and emotion is as important as intellect. It is mpost decidedly NOT easy to understand, is susceptible to multiple interpretations, and on second- and third-reading may reveal vastly different meaning.

I agree completely with the first choice, which could even be expanded to "Almost Anything Written By Joyce". IMO he is much more about language and sound than thought and intellectual sense...which also almost disqualifies him as a writer and moves him into the field of music.