I started carrying a folder about the same time I was introduced to P38 - about age 5. No question IMHO that P38 is a superior tool but that is not the point. I do not know how long Swiss Army knives have been around. I got my first one about 45 years ago. The can opener design has not changed since then (although I did get my last one SAK about 8 years ago so I cannot be completely sure). I would find it hard to believe that most young men have not seen or handled an SAK at some point. I know that some of the Brit special forces like to buy and carry their own.
Any young man of my generation who ever was in a position to have to look after himself pretty much acquired the skill of can opening as a survival mechanism, using not just one or two can openers, but several.
So my first reaction to seeing the Leno show was first incredulity and than amusement. Later I began to wonder about the implications.
I understand that the current form of rations (MREs?) do not contain cans and, as someone pointed out, rightly so: They have other things to worry about. However, the rub of that argument is that overdependence on issue rations may not be a good thing in the "fog of war" situation. The extreme is to say that if not issued with MREs the troops would starve. The opposite of that is the Russian guerilla cavalry in WW2 who generally managed with a bagful of vegetables scrounged off the land for 3 weeks at a time.
Many have commented on the possible reason of this state of affairs and there is probably a bit of truth in all of them. I just could not get away from explaining how single young men survive without opening cans. Then it came to me: Take-out meals!
I can pick up the same Boston area stations as before, plus new -2, -3 etc channels from PBS. All I lost was DX'ing the analog VHF ones 100+ miles away, like Portland ME and Hartford CT.
bidness.dev.nul???
When I was using a more sophisticated Mac newsreader and could see headers, one frequent, irascible poster would set replies to go to dev.null unless we manually changed them. We teased him that it was really the secret vault where he kept and fed his piece of Invisigoth, the girl who escaped into the Internet on the X-Files.
I used to watch Charlie Rose every night, that and "Everybody Loves Raymond". No more.
11,13, 7,9 28, 56 and 58 are gone. No more "Frontline" or "Nova" either....... I don't even get an ABC affiliate anymore.
I get a bunch of Spanish language programming. That, NBC and ION are about it. Something else is a little strange. I have to rescan a couple times per day to keep CBS.
"Michael Koblic" wrote in news:gTkQm.34190$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe01.iad:
I'm not sure it it is still the case, but it can depend on which brand of Swiss Army Knife you have. My father had a Wenger SAK, and the can opener on it was terrible. You had to stab it through the can top, and it cut up instead of down. You could take the top off a can OK, but it left a ragged sharp edge sticking up. Definitely not something you wanted to drink out of, for example.
Victorinox uses the downward cutting hook the same as the old Boy Scout knives, both similar to a P38 in basic design. I think Victoriox & Wenger got into some sort of patent / trade-mark legal contest back in the late 50's or early 60's when they first became popular in the US. After using my dad's, I couldn't imagine why anyone would want one until I discovered Victorinox had a decent can opener. Someplace I also have an SAK with a slit in the Phillips screw driver so you can use it to wind up a sardine can lid.
Over soup and sandwich at Panera tonight, Dorothy asked me how TVs worked.
I started with a 1955 Philco black and white set and explained how the horizontal and vertical saw-tooth signals moved the electron beam across the screen, why the H and V sync signals were so important, and all that. Even touched on the phase angle reference in color TV (VERY briefly).
She's a bright girl! She immediately said, "Yeah, but flat panel screens don't work like that, do they".
So I explained to her how the flat screen has tiny computer circuits in it that 1) monitor the incoming RGB (or whatever) signal and store it to screen memory while 2) other little dedicated circuits copy from their portion of screen memory to their little portion of the display screen. Refresh rates versed flicker.
And all of that to maintain backwards compatibility to the original video signal.
But my bottom line to the OP is simply thus: once software replaces mechanical stuff, it's sufficiently advanced enough to qualify as magic.
And who can possibly understand that kind of Magic? Some of us here do - but certainly not all of us.
Just buy it (cheap) and play with it until it breaks.
Very little of the consumer electronics products are actually repairable. The problem that keeps if from working may just be a portion of one chip. But cost to repair versed cost to replace? It has to be pretty expensive stuff before it can be economically repaired.
Depends on what I'm looking for, I have both "civilian" MREs and GI issue stuff. The Civi stuff I get through Sopakco (Sure-Pak 12) They also make GI MREs so you get a lot of the same items EXCEPT they offer meals YOU choose. MREDepot.com also carries Menu-C MREs and those are basically military MREs that were ordered for a contractor in Iraq who then backed out of the deal. Those also have a somewhat better selection of entrees.
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the Sopakco civies.
For real GI stuff I hit Ebay or a friend who runs a surplus outfit. This last case came off EBay and has a pack date of 6/09. They are now in cold storage until needed. If you can keep them at 30 degrees or so they will last about 12 years.
I was never in battle, but I was trained by the US Army how to do it. Not that you would understand the difference. Does the term 'Affix bayonets' mean anything to you?
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