None of this has much to do with feminism, or disagreements, or for that matter anti-feminism. It's a question of whether public/semi-public social media should be treated the same as, for example, your phone, or your door. Calling somebody repeatedly (and I mean repeatedly) against their wishes can qualify as harassment in most countries. Coming to their residence or place of work most definitely can. Even if the content of the calls is not threatening, it can still be harassment, which is how you get a restraining order in place. So, regardless of whether you 'disagree with feminists' or not, the question is if you can successfully sue someone for harassment if they take steps to spam your social media repeatedly, against your wishes. The fact that the plaintiffs call themselves feminists and the defendant calls them dumb cunts [edited for accuracy:] hateful bitches is, in this description, an unnecessary smoke screen to feed the myth of MRA victimization on the internet.

In my country you probably couldn't sue successfully for this, and I doubt you could in Canada either. I also think the plaintiffs seem like absolute fucking shits on twitter and I hope they lose. Possibly they could get a limited restraining order against him, though that might require a bit of sophistication on the part of the court to enforce through twitter.

Also, whether or not the plaintiffs were also harassing him doesn't automatically invalidate their suit, but it might rightfully be a mitigating circumstance for his behavior - either because it demonstrates that they were actively engaging with him (even if indirectly), and didn't actually fear for their 'psychosocial security', or because it demonstrates that they were creating a real negative public impact on him, and he had a valid reason for trying to engage them in the way he did.

I don't know why internet lawyering is such a dirty word, it's so much fun.

Not sure about the accuracy of those numbers either, seeing as there were more than 17 comics (close to 30), more than one novel (closer to 10) and arguably more than 4 movies (if you include the released-to-DVD "Salvation" machinima and the the "T2 Battle Across Time" tour/rides ;-)

Understood. And it is upsetting to watch and comforting to see the dog's reaction. But on the other hand this is the first I'm reading that self-abuse, depressive episodes and panic attacks are now included in Aspergers, so I question the accuracy of the video's title. Or else I have been skimming the subject all this time, which is entirely possible.

I always read about it being socially inept, not being able to interpret facial reactions and body language of others, retaining reams of trivial data in memory (serial numbers, license plates), sitting awkwardly, being committed to certain routines, in general being smart and odd, etc.

People seem to cherry pick some aspect and now they have a "touch" of Aspergers, or they are now an "Aspie" just like their favorite character on "Big Bang Theory".

Really strong, but is shite at accuracy.

It was just over-hyped. They should have talked about the scientific accuracies after it opened. If they hadn't built it up, people wouldn't be hacking it down.

...and the robots aren't just two slabs of metal. They Rubik's Cube out, and the smaller blocks swivel out into arms and manipulators.

There's a making of TARS and CASE video on the sift (try 2:00 if you're impatient) that explains why they're a cool idea. If for nothing else, the fact they aren't anthropomorphic in any real way.

I have much more experience than the average person. Lars seems to invent and conjecture as much historical evidence as some other posters here, but what he does is very impressive. You could accurately classify it as trick shooting, but since archery is now a sport instead of a practical thing...it's all pretty gray.

What's neat is that Lars' technique works significantly better than current common practices...albeit in what are currently uncommon situations, such as riding horseback or running & shooting. There are 2 things that makes these kinds of situations difficult:

1) Keeping the arrow resting against the side of the bow and the handle. If you've ever shot before, most beginning shooters will have their arrow accidentally drop to the ground many times before they fire a successful shot. Even for someone who is more than a novice, a strong breeze can easily knock your arrow away from this notch. Shooting while on horseback or running is a whole new level of difficult.

2) Firing rapidly. Firing off many arrows in succession is a difficult thing, seriously. Despite Anna Maltese's dismissal of Lars' demonstration on why firing on the 'wrong' side of the bow is faster, it truly does remove many of the steps, and speeds up the entire process. In modern archery, Right handed people fire the arrow on the left side of the bow, and left handed people fire the arrow on the Right side of the bow. Reasons for this could be conjectured, but from personal experience, learning how to shoot the arrow from the wrong side of the bow is almost like learning archery all over again...it feels weird. From watching related videos, the way Lars holds many arrows in his hand, making sure to rotate each arrow into the appropriate knocked position each time, is a significant achievement that Anna did not touch on.

What's particularly impressive is that Lars has achieved improvements in both categories simultaneously by firing from the wrong side of the bow. To my knowledge, modern trick shooting is the typical shooting style simply with impressive feats of accuracy, or at best being able to throw an object into the air and hit it with one arrow. In comparison, Lars changed the way he shoots his arrows, and has been able to significantly upgrade the art because of it (throwing an object in the air and hitting it with 3 arrows before reaching the ground). In my opinion, this is beyond regular trick shooting, and warrants a reinvestigation on why modern archery is the way it is.

I completely agree with her about Lars on many points. He often (very often actually) makes his technique seem "the best in the world" when compared to ANY other technique (as there are A LOT of shooting techniques; some that need different bows, materials, and setups).

Kind of like being able to shoot through plate-mail... Lars would NEVER be able to pull that off (of course no one, with a shortbow and the wrong arrow--or tip--will be doing it either; the crossbow is as close as you can get to being small and puncturing plate) as it requires a huge amount of pull force to puncture plate (even heavy English oaken wood shields). The type of bow is a big issue, because that is where you get your draw strength. But, what type of tip you have on your arrow will determine whether or not it even goes into or just bounces off the armor...

However, for the most part, archers didn't try to puncture plate armor--because to be honest about it: it was HARD, it required a VERY heavy bow and expensive tips (of course the bows were also expensive, because they would not be made out of normal material--it might be a specially imported type of wood that could hold up to extreme forces; the string may also be made of something a bit different than normal). So, you didn't have very many people walking around with the innate ability to puncture plate. BUT, what most archers trained a VERY long time to accomplish was extreme accuracy, for one reason alone: armor.

Instead of trying to puncture plate or even chain, archers instead aimed for gaps or areas were there was no coverage (basically anywhere you bend or connect the armor to another piece or tie/connect itself together; so places like under the armpit or along the side of the body were the armor is pulled together and tied shut). Then they may not have to go through anything at all, or they will only have light leather or heavy cloth armor in the way--either way they will penetrate, and they will slowly kill their target by slowing them down and immobilizing them, then moving in for the finishing blow OR if they hit the right place they can just let blood loss finish them off...

But, this requires extreme accuracy, especially in battle AND especially so if you are firing from a horse (if you were lucky you were able to ride behind someone and concentrate solely on firing your shots, then you could add a bit of speed as well). This is the one place that Lars has horribly mislead people--OR he has made a really great breakthrough. But, if Lars never bothers to really demonstrate this stuff, we have no idea how great an archer he really is.

His entire video is one gigantic edit. Every shot and "trick" has been setup with the camera in the right place. The biggest problem is we don't know if it took Lars 1000 attempts to accomplish some of these feats (he makes it sound in some areas that it happens VERY fast, however...but due to the editing, or how he edited it, we actually have no idea if his claims are true) or if he did it in ten...or right off the bat...

That is why I said we needed to wait for Lars to actually talk to us about this whole thing, and to clear various areas up (records and competition). Because he has set a very high bar for himself, and from his own video he seems to be amazing--but, I like many know that if you edit enough and try something over and over again, you can make yourself look like an expert *whatever* whenever you wish to do it...

I agree heavily with her about his historic claims (and also mocking him on his "super clumsy" shots and setups to make fun of "modern" archers); she also points out, correctly, how wrong he is on some of those claims. Like everyone shooting from the left side; which somehow Lars, in ALL his studying completely and utterly missed. Which tells me one thing: she knows more about archery history than Lars actually does.

But, is Lars actually a great archer? Would Lars be a good archer in a battle, or more specifically his "technique"? Lastly, is he really an unique archer more than worth praising? We won't know until Lars does what I mentioned above; he must meet these criticisms head on.

If we allow Lars time to learn how to ride a horse; or it might be a bit more fair to just allow him to ride behind someone controlling the horse, which was a common practice even in battle (then make sure Lars knows how to also fire properly from a horse, since it requires controlling a horse--if you're alone--and staying on the horse using your thigh muscles...which is actually a pretty hard thing to do...and requires expert horsemanship; asking Lars to accomplish this is laughable, as this type of thing would have been a lifetime achievement in the past AND any archer that could fire fast, accurate, and ride a horse by himself...would have been a horrific force on the battlefield; then give him a sword/melee skill--make sure they have a lot of upper body strength--and a very well made, thick steel buckler and he'd be godlike; and then enough armor to protect from arrows...BUT this means you have to be very strong...otherwise you will never be able to accomplish ANY of the feats with the bow mentioned above; BTW, I'm mentioning a superhero right here, there "may" have been a few people like this in history, but they would've been very few and far apart...and more than likely used sparingly).

Mounted archers are extremely powerful against all units that are mounted yet slower than them and of course those on foot and without a long range means of attacking them (at least shorter than the mounted archer's range), this I will always agree with. We already know that mounted archery units could create absolute havoc in the past, see: Alexander The Great. However, eventually people figured out how to deal with this type of threat as well... But, horse mounted archers do have their "nemeses", namely foot archers--since they can take some time (if an arrow comes their way, they block it--it is much harder for a horse archer to carry around a big shield or at least just have on sitting nearby--or you can aim for their horse, which is why above I said that "superhero" like warrior would need a melee skill, because eventually they WILL be on the ground).

So, again, we have to wait and see if Lars bothers to respond to this video and to ALL of the others that have also been made (he did make a lot of people angry; as he did make some stuff up and possibly "overshoot" the mark on other claims and possibly even his own abilities...). I won't hold my breath though.

I think we can all come to a fairly logical conclusion on this. If Lars NEVER responds to anything, then we will have to assume that a lot of his "super-speed" with "accuracy" was due to one thing alone: editing.

Phew, I think that covers everything...it certainly was long enough!!!!

The one part that I did have probably the most griped about (OK they were two, and @Trancecoach's article mentions it too). First, the catching of the arrows in mid-air. I really believe that those shots were actually (delivered/shot) towards Lars at a low speed; sure he caught them and did his thing, but had it been WAR I highly doubt he'd be pulling this stunt off every single second (plus, eventually he would hurt his hands, which is the utmost no-no for an archer). Lastly, the splitting of the arrow in mid-air. Again, this had to be semi-staged (for a huge laundry list of reasons). That is why I mentioned at the start of my comment that is was utterly obvious that this guy is a trick shooter and that also means he uses/engineers/ and applies all of the "secrets" of his trade to make his audience go: "OOoooOhhh, AaaAAaawwwWw!)...

I will also agree, as I said, until Lars comes out and talks about this or goes to competition, I have to sit partially on the fence on this. It looks neat, but there is so much editing and camera angle shenanigans, plus whatever else they decided to throw in (like pre-scoring arrows that get "split" in mid-air). We have no real idea what the range, power of his shots are--and as also noted we also don't know how much he had to try to get this all correct, which means we have to also wonder what his actual accuracy is too.

It could be real, but I'm going for the 50% real, 50% marketing setup. Still neat, especially if he can ever do it live.

Interesting that he chose that analogy.

If someone said to me he's the 'Bruce Lee playing ping pong of archery', I would take it to mean it's all faked. (Bruce Lee never played ping pong with nunchaku, it's a well known fake).

I asked a friend of mine about it. He has represented his country in archery, so I trust his opinion on it.

Paraphrased:

Yeah, it's real.
No, it's not that impressive.

He didn't "rediscover" any of the techniques he claimed to. Most of them have been known for ages, and the change for modern archery was intentional and well known. the whole "studying ancient manuscripts" etc etc is bollocks

the catching arrows thing: difficult but not impossible. you use a very light bow, and it's actually not that hard

his accuracy is mildly impressive. not what I'd call amazing at the ranges he shows

he is fast, i'll give him that

67 seconds seems a pretty long time for just ten arrows, which suggests they have some requirements that would probably disqualify this guy here. Distance, accuracy, draw force of the bow, something?

This is obviously a very great skill and at the same time it has its faults. It's also obvious to anyone with common sense that he IS a "trick" shooter. I mean almost every demonstration in the video IS a "trick" shot of some kind. Would any of these things come in handy in war... Certainly, many of those "tricks" would put him at an extreme advantage--especially if he could do this extremely well on horseback (and you must be a GOOD horseback rider, motorcycles don't count--a horse is a whole different story; especially if you plan to do some of the *feats* I'll mention below, while in combat). He would be even better if he had mastery over the shorter bow(s) he uses in this and also a longbow for long targets and heavily armored enemies.

As for him penetrating chainmail, that is a good question and I do believe he could quite possibly end up penetrating the chainmail in some situations while (possibly still getting through the chainmail) being stopped in others (he shows being able to penetrate mail with an under armor of some type, but we don't get a lot of details about that situation to be honest). It depends on how his bow is made, the string it has, the type of arrow he is using (or the tip, to be honest), and his draw strength (along with this is range). On the chainmail side it depends on what type of chainmail the enemy is using and then whether they have an under armor of some kind--and again, range.

The problem in this video--except for a few shots--is that he does shoot very close in many of the cases; within 30-20 feet. In a close combat experience--which wasn't necessarily unusual for archers in the past (especially as I mentioned mounted ones--of course you'd be nuts to not be mounted at these ranges--or at the least be a swordsman as well...which was even more rare) he would terrorize opponents... Unless they are wearing plate or other heavy types of armors, then he is in a bit of trouble. But if he really does have great accuracy, then even many of these armors types wouldn't necessarily help you--and could eventually lead to your own death.

I say we give this some time and see if Lars gives us more answers (like "records", competition, types of bows and arrows, chainmail used, etc...).

^I noticed in this other video (below) of a different shooter using one of Lars' 'tricks', similar speed and accuracy is achieved by using the method of holding the arrows in the bow hand, and could be sped up by more than double the shooting speed if the method of notching the arrow on the outside were used. This other video shows how useful speed is in 'battle', and shows just how much only one of Lars' tricks speeds up the shooting speed without diminishing accuracy.
I admit, it is odd that Lars is not recognized as the fastest arrow shooter by Guinness, but not definitive. Some people just don't care about recognition or Guinness. I'm now on the fence, but still leaning towards it being 'real'.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Rapid-Fire-Bow-Shooting-From-Horseback-Mongol-Hun-Style

Meh. I don't even like that there is a cultural stigma associated with just admitting that teaching is a hard job and you can't mention that without attaching the disclaimer of "Well there ARE bad teachers who do _______ and that's bad."

Here's some food for thought: There is ALWAYS a self-check in place to guard against bad teachers, an army of people who will complain about said teacher constantly and actively work to remove that teacher from the position, the students. Students love complaining about teachers that they don't like, or they let it slip in different ways. "I love that sub, he let us do whatever we wanted."

Other professionals in education quickly zero in on comments from students and, with reliable accuracy, can identify problems with colleagues. I, myself, overheard a conversation students were having about another teacher stumbling around 'acting drunk and swearing' and went over to ask about it. I was shocked when I was shown a video shot from under a desk of this happening, stopped what I was doing, grabbed the principal who conveniently was in the hall, and that was the last day that person was in our building.

I'm fairly confident; in spite of morale being low, teachers being bashed in the news, students suffering from more problems than I can count, and being forced to teach to a standardized test; damn-near every person in my school is doing the best they can.

p.s. the pay sucks too.

Well, my point wasn't so much against weapons being developed to improve accuracy and reduce unintended casualties, but rather the video presentation, in particular the music, which is clearly selected to create as much of a "cool" factor as possible. I find the video fascinating, sure, but there's nothing cool about it, and I would upvote if it didn't have this music (or any music).