Donward

That certainly looks like a weapon that would be carried by an anonymous henchman standing around in the background of a super villain's top secret lair. It's the sort of gun that says "I'm wearing a bright blue contractors helmet and silver coveralls but I'm not supposed to look directly at the camera while I shuffle around in front of this forklift". It's the sort of gun that is so imposing, a guy with a toupee and tuxedo armed only with a .32 caliber pistol can shoot me from the distance of most cricket pitches while I spray the Spectre sub-machine gun futilely from the hip causing sparks to fly from the sheet metal siding the hero is hiding behind. It's the sort of weapon that the aforementioned hero wouldn't even deign to pick up as he escorts the buxom love interest through the hanger vault of the top secret lair while he attempts to track down the aforementioned super villain, before an elaborate countdown sequence blows up a recognizable World Heritage Site with a stolen nuclear device.
 
Cool find though!

I thought this was the GREAT actors thread?
 

 
Back in the days when motion picture actors were able to deliver their lines and hold an emotion for ten seconds, twenty seconds or up to a minute or more in a single take.
 
Also, back in the days when those same said great actors would be mocked in cartoons with firearms and violence...
 
http://youtu.be/PPlCVWG-Be0

That certainly looks like a weapon that would be carried by an anonymous henchman standing around in the background of a super villain's top secret lair. It's the sort of gun that says "I'm wearing a bright blue contractors helmet and silver coveralls but I'm not supposed to look directly at the camera while I shuffle around in front of this forklift". It's the sort of gun that is so imposing, a guy with a toupee and tuxedo armed only with a .32 caliber pistol can shoot me from the distance of most cricket pitches while I spray the Spectre sub-machine gun futilely from the hip causing sparks to fly from the sheet metal siding the hero is hiding behind. It's the sort of weapon that the aforementioned hero wouldn't even deign to pick up as he escorts the buxom love interest through the hanger vault of the top secret lair while he attempts to track down the aforementioned super villain, before an elaborate countdown sequence blows up a recognizable World Heritage Site with a stolen nuclear device.
 
Cool find though!

So let me guess. Jack Ryan goes back in time to stop a Russian nationalist from planting a nuclear device at the 1985 Geneva Summit, blowing up Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. There he teams up with Captain Marko Ramius who was attached as a liaison for the Red Fleet.
 
And yes, god damnit, this plot works and will bring the series full circle and it makes more sense than Debt of Honor.

Heavy, squat and pretentious looking? Seems like the average poster on the Off topic section.

If that's the "small-sized" assault rifle, where the hell is the BIG sized?

As always relevant. 
 

A fact which, fittingly enough, nobody expects.

There is a finite number of true believers. There is a significantly less finite number of people who will join up to strike at a hated foe. The goal is to prevent the latter from doing so. If going and being a useful invested member of society is a good life, living on the run and fighting and dying starts sounding a whole lot less like a good idea. Just look at what happened with the cycle of attack and reprisal in Israel and Palestine allowing lovely folks like Hamas to gain control over Palestine by making things into a war and opening their arms to their new recruits. Compare it to something like the Thai work against their little communist insurgency.
 
And bullshit. We won the Iraqi insurgency just as much as we won the insurgency following the slavers' revolt, which is to say that we created an environment where the worst actors get to control the events in the region if they outlast us.

Posted Today, 10:38 PM
Donward, on 22 Feb 2015 - 10:36 PM, said:
 
To be honest, I'm far more critical of most media property - particularly television series - than that.
 
 
Eh. The first couple episodes were OK with the horse and the tank thing and I was able to talk myself into watching the entire first season despite the love triangle bullshit and the annoying kid. Kicking ass with a .357 revolver and any show that has Norman Reedus in it goes a long way with me. But I stopped watching when The Farm happened and have never looked back. Which is a shame because I liked the zombie genre before it got ruined by all the hipster morons who think it's cool to dress like zombies and the survivalists/preppers.
 
The point is NOT to be the zombies, hipsters! And survivalists/preppers. Way to use that OPSEC about preparing for the "Zombie Apocalypse". Now everyone is using the term. Why don't you post some How To Youtube videos about how to fool the guv'mint by building ARs from 80 percent lowers while you're at it since you love shooting yourselves in the foot.
 
Shit like this is why we can't have nice things.

This guy is wrang.
 
http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2015/02/23/are-iron-sights-dead/

When I wrote "hilariously" I was kind of poking fun at our M14-was-best-in-Nam friend of a few days ago. That's all.
 
Of course Hollywood filmmakers of the time had to use real people and whatever props they could to get the "cast of thousands" effect for giant battle scenes. And considering that the AK-47 hadn't really entered the public's awareness, any old rifle held by the human waves of injuns Vietcong would do. 
 
As I mentioned above, the US military went above the call of duty to give John Wayne and Warner Bros. access to high tech equipment of the day, whether it was Huey helicopters, miniguns, Claymore mines (training), the Skyhook system (which was used in an actual military operation just six years previously) and authentic Tiger Stripe combat fatigues. While it wasn't the first Hollywood movie to use the M16, it was certainly one of the first movies to portray it being used widely in combat. Although in the end, the movie did no favors to the M16 considering the infamous Mattel Marauder scene where John Wayne smashes a toy M16 against a tree so the weapon doesn't fall into the wrong hands. This, more than anything, has probably contributed more to the denigration of the M16 being a "plastic rifle".
 
So with the amount of technology on hand, I'm surprised that the AK-47 wasn't used in this film, given the star power of The Duke and its pro-American slant. There is a scene at the beginning of the movie with the lineup of commie weapons from around the world being imported into Vietnam which includes a Soviet SKS (then being about 23 years past its original manufacture). Given that the movie is set in 1965, I'm not sure (off the top of my head) if having the Viet Cong armed with AKs would be anachronistic or whether they were reserved for regular NVA units. Or it could have been that the movie makers or the US military didn't want to portray the bad-guys as having a very technologically advanced weapon.
 
So it is interesting to me that the AK-47 only really enters the broad American consciousness in the late-1970s and 1980s in terms of a pop culture phenomenon as the ultimate bad-guy gun. Stories from Vietnam no doubt enhanced its mysticism as did its use by terrorist organizations throughout the 1970s and 1980s. And by then, ironically, the original Kalashnikov was becoming relegated as a second-line weapon in favor of the AK-74.

When I wrote "hilariously" I was kind of poking fun at our M14-was-best-in-Nam friend of a few days ago. That's all.
 
Of course Hollywood filmmakers of the time had to use real people and whatever props they could to get the "cast of thousands" effect for giant battle scenes. And considering that the AK-47 hadn't really entered the public's awareness, any old rifle held by the human waves of injuns Vietcong would do. 
 
As I mentioned above, the US military went above the call of duty to give John Wayne and Warner Bros. access to high tech equipment of the day, whether it was Huey helicopters, miniguns, Claymore mines (training), the Skyhook system (which was used in an actual military operation just six years previously) and authentic Tiger Stripe combat fatigues. While it wasn't the first Hollywood movie to use the M16, it was certainly one of the first movies to portray it being used widely in combat. Although in the end, the movie did no favors to the M16 considering the infamous Mattel Marauder scene where John Wayne smashes a toy M16 against a tree so the weapon doesn't fall into the wrong hands. This, more than anything, has probably contributed more to the denigration of the M16 being a "plastic rifle".
 
So with the amount of technology on hand, I'm surprised that the AK-47 wasn't used in this film, given the star power of The Duke and its pro-American slant. There is a scene at the beginning of the movie with the lineup of commie weapons from around the world being imported into Vietnam which includes a Soviet SKS (then being about 23 years past its original manufacture). Given that the movie is set in 1965, I'm not sure (off the top of my head) if having the Viet Cong armed with AKs would be anachronistic or whether they were reserved for regular NVA units. Or it could have been that the movie makers or the US military didn't want to portray the bad-guys as having a very technologically advanced weapon.
 
So it is interesting to me that the AK-47 only really enters the broad American consciousness in the late-1970s and 1980s in terms of a pop culture phenomenon as the ultimate bad-guy gun. Stories from Vietnam no doubt enhanced its mysticism as did its use by terrorist organizations throughout the 1970s and 1980s. And by then, ironically, the original Kalashnikov was becoming relegated as a second-line weapon in favor of the AK-74.

You're not trying hard enough.

Yeah. Yeah. Laugh it up. LAUGH it up.
 
I was talking about the radio you cretins. 

BAYONET

Is it the communist evil magic that turns the entire battlefield a grainy black, white and grey to ruin superior teutonic supermen's eagle vision?

Russian troops with SVTs:

How are douchebags like John Oliver still a thing?

Nah, Liveleak is clearly the go-to source for all your insurgent and populist rebellion needs.

From most of the videos I see these days, any RPG RPG must include muttering "Allah Akbar" repetitively while someone films you with a cell phone camera who is also muttering "Allah Akbar". This goes in for two to four minutes until you work up the courage to shoot. At that point something happens like you being sniped, hit by artillery, machine gun fire or the RPG itself explodes because it has been boobie-trapped. At which point the "Allah Akbar-ing" reaches a frenzied pitch as the cameraman loses focus.
And then inexplicably loads the whole thing on YouTube.

What? You'll go a runnin' off to that half-mad German git? He'll be too busy talking to trees! Why I have more Royal Blood in my left gonad than the entire Royal Family put together!
No, I'm serious! Given that I'm related in a round about way to King Edward IV (the most battle winningest, sex havingest of the English monarchs) and the recent paternity issues that have cropped up after the discovery of Richard III.

American foreign policy these past six years has been rudderless to the point that it makes George W. Bush seem almost Churchillian in comparison.
I am being very kind and circumspect here but it seems the Administration is more interested in style over substance. By meeting with the leader of India it looks like they're doing cool President stuff. Besides, it's all a distraction from social engineering here at home.
In short it is the Cadillac Escalade of diplomacy, lowered with the oversize spinner wheels, ground effects and obnoxious sound system blaring, oblivious of what the other foreign heads of state think. It doesn't matter that it is high-centered and stuck on a speed bump because they all about that swag.
The unfortunate thing is the other players in the game have a good read on our President and have been acting accordingly.

Just making an RPG not do physics a disservice seems to be a challenge for developers, let alone history.
 
Speaking of Justinian, my mind sort of got blown reading about the Corpus Iuris Civilis, not only because it showed the long sweep of legal history (we have a partly Roman-Dutch legal system), but because it's like the wasteland survival guide becoming the foundation text of fallout civilization and being actively taught to students till 4000AD.

Getting this thread vaguely back on topic, there are analogous differences in liquid propellant chemical rockets.  In some rockets a portion of the propellant is burned to spin a turbine and vented overboard; this is called a "gas generator" cycle.  In others, the cold side of the turbine gas is used in the main nozzle.  This is "staged combustion," and it's part of the reason the RD-180 has such good ISP for a LOX/kerosene rocket.