Or perhaps the stories of the Native American chief's feat are exaggerated and/or made up.

This was really good! It's pretty obvious now that most or all the history was invented by Lars, instead of studied. However, there are a few points that she didn't touch on or completely dismissed.

She makes a quite unsubstantiated claim that ancient people cannot measure time, and dismisses the entire speed advantage of the technique Lars is using. I would have liked to see how she would have addressed the account on the native american chief's abilities at speedshooting, where Lars pulled (invented?) an account that the chief could shoot 10 arrows into the air before the first one hit the ground, and Lars managed to break that record. Despite that a great deal of historical drawings are indeed poor at describing technique (just look at how many drawings depict the horse's gallop incorrectly), this is a metric that is easily recorded. Unless another modern archer has managed to come close to shooting 10 arrows into the air before the first hits the ground, the chief's technique has indeed been lost, and has potentially been revived through Lars.

Additionally, she mocked Lars a bit, calling out, 'where's his horse?', as if his technique wouldn't work on a horse. But, she then showed videos of people rapidly firing at targets while riding on horseback. Again, Lars' technique has a tremendous speed advantage, and he makes it obvious many times over that this firing technique can be performed during acrobatic stunts. If archery truly is about 'what works', this would work better.

Finally, she did a great job at pointing out how Lars was shooting with relatively little force compared to full draw on heavy bows. Indeed, where Lars shows he can pierce chainmail, he was shooting substantially slower, likely to pull back more weight. However, against unarmored or lightly armored opponents, it may not be necessary to pull back 80+ pounds. Instead of trying to invalidate his entire technique by saying he wouldn't be able to pierce full platemail without extremely high force, it would be more accurate to say that the tremendous speed comes at the price of lower force per arrow.

While Anna Maltese brought up many great points about historical fabrication and showed that Lars is overly sensationalizing his technique, she is committing the opposite sin by entirely dismissing the technique's advantages.

What no-one seems to realise is 'Native Americans' refers to a fringe group of radical atavists and racialists. Of the descendants of those who survived their natural displacement by a more advanced culture, the overwhelming majority have integrated and interbred with that culture. The only people left who still call themselves 'Native American' are a vanishing minority of ancestor-worshipping crybaby whackjobs.

Odd. Where I live we have many native American casinos. Not one of them has stereotypical 'indians' in head dresses, loin cloths, war paint, and beaded dresses. Except for the totem pole in front and their names, you might think they came direct from Reno. Is it different where you live?

My mom had the best solution to this Redskins issue, just change the mascot to a red potato, problem solved, name remains.

The referenced story:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-daily-show-springs-showdown-with-native-americans-on-redskins-fans/2014/09/19/c6c5f936-3f73-11e4-b03f-de718ede
b92f_story.html

We've been on a bunch of dates
I weigh debates that this creates
And hate that state of forced introspection
We traded wit, we swapped some spit,
You fingered me a little bit
But we never really had a connection

You did nothing wrong, I have no excuse
Just my intuition telling me we shouldn't reproduce

I know I have to end it
But pretend to just suspend it
By contending that I'm busy all week
I let the foregone linger on
Text back with an emoticon
Withdraw from you by being oblique

Inside I know my tactics just delay it
But I'd do anything so I don't have to say it

I'll draw this out forever like it's Vietnam
Then one day I'll be gone like Bambi's mom Awww

Cause there's the right thing to do
Then there's what I'm gonna do
There's so much I should say
But instead... I do the fade away

Now I'm fading like chalk on a sidewalk
Or the polio virus after Jonas Salk
Like a Jewish guy at Sizzler on Yom Kippur
The Whig party post Millard Fillmore

The erection of a man on antidepressants
The cast of Diff'rent Strokes after adolescence
Reproductive rights below the Mason Dixon
Native Americans after the barter systems
Your thyroid gland after Hashimoto
The family in the Back to the Future photo
Yeah I fade away

We say that men are asshole who don't communicate
We revel in our victimhood and amplify our hate
We find ways to be indignant like it's a sport
Then dissect their malignance with the views we distort

The way men break up may be sloppy and terse
What they do is bad, but what we do is worse

We pretend to ourselves it's the nice thing to do
To let you down gently by just not ever telling you
And deep down we know it's the worst way to play it
But we are what we have... huge pussies

And women are hypocrites
Especially ones in comedy bands
We see your faults but not our own
Then we wonder why we're all alone

We fill you up with maybe's, excuses and stalls
But like a baby in China... it's better to have balls

Not the Good Wife type like Christine Baranski
So I'll pull out and leave like I'm Roman Polanski

Cause there's the right thing to do
Then there's what I'm gonna do
There's so much I should say
But instead... I do the fade away

Like Verbal Kint fading into Kaiser Soze
The rights in Arizona for a guy named Jose
Opportunities for a college grad
The love between your mom and dad
Gonna Peter out like a gay Cetera
Iranian relations since the Regan era
Black Nike sales after Heaven's Gate
Summer Camp attendance at Penn State
The name Adolph after World War Two
Like Debbie Gibson's pop career, Out of the Blue
Yeah I fade away

Cause I don't wanna get to know you
I just want to blow you... off

Based on the book The Rebel: The Outlaw Josie Wales, written under a pseudonym by Asa Earl Carter, a White supremacist. There was a This American Life (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/527/transcript) which goes into AEC and The Education of Little Tree. It's interesting how, based on that, AEC's pecular point of view comes across quite clearly in this clip--the distrust of Blue Coats, the disdain for government, and even viewing the Native American as a "Noble Savage".

You make a point to be sure. And it is clearly being ignored. Regardless of how it came to the point, the USA for sure would go absolutely insane, and declare war on the attackers, as well as one or two of their so called friends.

We already saw this in 9/11. We saw a conflict that required far too long to come to an inconclusion. We also saw it used, politically, as motivation to launch an additional war against someone else. I might add, that I suspect many people would consider both efforts to have been unsuccessful.

The situation in Palestine seems far more similar to the situation with the Native Americans some time ago. Land theft and ethnic cleansing by virtue of superior technology and a racial superiority complex and an unwillingness on the natives' part to just roll over. I would have hoped that we had learned something since then.

I would

I don't know enough about the situation in Palestine, or what kinds of laws are imposed from outside there, but just hypothetically, I wonder: what if they renounced all initiation of violence altogether, and just dropped the push to set up their own state? What if, instead they declared their territories to be "state-free" and "tax free havens?" Maybe they could open some casinos a la Native Americans; and provide some tax-free banking; let tech giants set up tax-free research centers there without all of the immigration restrictions that seem to impose so many unnecessary challenges.. And what if, instead of waging war or attacking Israel, they simply used any military capabilities they had to set up private security firms, and secure their banking system, maybe provide some safe gold depositories? In a generation or two, the Israelis would see that they are the ones living in a prison/tax farm, not the Palestinians. I wonder if they could get away with it...


It's interesting to me how some folks tend to (more or less) "take sides" in defense of states (or would-be states) in conflicts like this one. As if states somehow had "rights" or as if states somehow represented "the people" within each state. That is simply, prima facie, false: For one thing, I think armed conflict on any sort of large scale inflicts violence against innocent parties on both sides; who, in their own rights, have reason to see the other side's violent acts as aggression (or at least as material threats to their human rights).

So I certainly agree that Israelis have a right not to have rockets coming at them, but it also seems to me that individual Palestinians have a right not to be collateral damage in Israel's bombings. Surely the hundreds who've lost family in Gaza have reason to be angry at Hamas, but you could see why they too would want to defend themselves.

The logic of war often leads to a situation where if you can defend one side fighting, you have to see why the other side would fight as well. And so we can condemn both sides, or sympathize with the innocent victims of both sides, but I don't see any simple formulation that shows why people who happen to live on one side of an arbitrary line have more of a "right" to respond violently to attacks that threaten their lives than the other side has.

The United States commits many forms of aggression quite frequently. In revenge, terrorists murdered innocent Americans on 9/11. Those Americans had a right not to be attacked and as Americans, we have a right to defend ourselves. But if tactics our government employs hurt third parties, doesn't it seem that the logic of collective self defense could easily be used to justify perpetual war?

None of what I say relies on any assumption that Hamas is any less criminal than the Israeli state. Even if it's much more criminal than the Israeli state, it seems to me that collective defense = perpetual war, because of the innocents on both sides who seem to have no way of striking against belligerents without violence that itself puts innocent people in harm's way.

This map/video is so wrong on so many levels.

Firstly, to call the entirety of the present day United States "Indian Land" before the states were created is wrong and idiotic. Native Americans (another misnomer) were not present in every spot of every bit of the lands in any way. For the majority of the middle of the states, Natives were nomadic peoples, thus while they could lay claim to all of the land if you asked, it is just as dumb as saying that a bear owns all of the territory it can walk on.

Secondly, for those of you who think that Native Americans should have more reservations, you should read any number of books by Native American scholars that say that the worst thing the governments have done is treat Native Americans as separate from standard citizens of the countries that have them. What they should do is eliminate reservations altogether to get rid of the dependency trap that is killing the Native American people as we speak. One might say, "well, they will lose their culture." But this, too is incorrect. Have the Chinese lost their culture in North America? Have the varying kinds of Europeans? In my city many people still celebrate Chinese New Year and lots celebrate Saint Patrick's Day and Robbie Burns day (regardless of whether or not these are ex-pat holidays).

So in conclusion, what the government did in the past vis-a-vis the murder of Native Peoples was absolutely despicable. However, taking land was very often something that happened without bloodshed and was done with trades and treaties, the bloodshed that followed was a clash between terrified Europeans and the people whose culture they didn't understand. But for many of the incidents the Native Peoples sanctified the taking of the land.

You can google a pic of real native americans so offended at Redskins stadium that they put on the team jackets.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=code+talkers+redskins&pc=MOZI&form=MOZSBR

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the Washington Redskins trademark registration, calling the football team’s name “disparaging to Native Americans.”
http://wapo.st/1qd3bki

They call themselves Redskins at the native american high school I drove by years ago.

I guess the progressives haven't told them what is politically correct.

I can imagine John Oliver making the trek out there and telling them 'Bloody 'ell, you cahn't call yourselves Redskins! It's degrading!"

It's funny how, exactly like in this video where the characters are ignoring the native American's point, the commenters here are ignoring it too, focusing only on the Sterling story.