The Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife is a stiletto with an overall length of 11.5 inches and a double-edged blade of 7 inches. There are a number of variations which include such differences as minor changes in the length of the blade, the design and shape of the pommel, manufacturer’s stamps, and handles that have different grip patterns and materials (metal, wood, and compressed leather washers).

The Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knife was designed by William Ewart Fairbairn and Eric Anthony Sykes, and was based on the Shanghai Fighting Knife they designed while serving as constables in the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP), the multinational police force of Shanghai’s international community. Prior to World War II, Shanghai had the reputation of being the most dangerous city in the world.

Christopher Lee evidently used one during WWII. The Week:

Long before he embarked on his illustrious acting career, Christopher Lee… was a member of the British Special Forces in World War II, a unit that engaged in acts of espionage and subterfuge against the Third Reich, including blowing up bridges, disrupting supply lines, and, yes, killing Nazis.

It turns out his experiences in warfare came in handy in the filming of The Lord of the Rings, when his character Saruman was stabbed in the back by Grima Wormtongue in a scene that was not included in the theatrical release. As director Peter Jackson explained in the movie’s DVD commentary, he tried to get Lee to scream as he was stabbed, only to be corrected. “Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody’s stabbed in the back?” Lee said he asked Jackson. “Because I do. [I]t’s more of a gasp because the breath is driven out of your body.”

Trooper Stan W Scott, No. 3 Army Commando, demonstrates how to use the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife.

Buzzfeed:

China turned us into bad people. The pushing, the shoving, the pollution, the spitting, the lack of respect toward the environment and their fellow human beings, the oily food, the wasteful attitude that is now ingrained in their psyche, we could go on. This is not to say we didn’t have great experiences and meet wonderful people, because we definitely did. But those moments were far less common for us. We hate being negative, and it may sound arrogant or pathetic, but that is the truth.

We would snap at each other over small things, and these minor arguments would turn into all-day affairs. Alesha would get angry at me over trivial matters, and I would retaliate. In the end I stopped being the caring partner that I should be. I neglected Alesha’s feelings and she would attack me for neglecting her. I continued to neglect her because I couldn’t stand being attacked. It was a vicious cycle.

Alesha started to resent travel, and I grew numb to it. Nothing excited us anymore. Just like you can lose your passion for a hobby when it becomes a job, we’re starting to become jaded with travel.

We hadn’t done proper exercise for longer than we could remember,” Salem wrote, “ate a lot of dodgy foods that had little nutritional value and put on weight. This just made us feel even more down. Alesha has always said that if your stomach is happy, you are happy. Well after the diet we experienced across China, Mongolia and Central Asia, our stomachs definitely weren’t happy.”

“At some point we sat down and realized that the best thing for us was to go our separate ways for a while, to give ourselves a break from each other.”

Hat tip to Ann Althouse.

Telegraph:

Seasoned wildlife photographers may have some unlikely competition in the form of a traffic camera when it comes to this year’s awards season.

CCTV captured this stunning image of a curious snowy owl in flight above a motorway in Montreal in the Canadian province of Quebec.

The traffic camera, which belongs to the Transport Quebec, captured several images of the white and black-spotted bird on January 3.

Quebec transport minister Robert Poëti tweeted photos of the owl with the caption [translated]: “Magnificent snowy owl picked up by surveillance cameras of the road network on the A-40 in the West of MTL”.

In a Facebook post he added: “An impressive solo was captured in full flight by the surveillance cameras of the road network on highway 40 … in the west of the island of Montreal.

R.R. Reno, at First Things, explains why Donald Trump goes up in the polls every time he opens his mouth and says something the establishment elite finds absolutely unacceptable.

When I was a boy, the popular humorist Corey Ford wrote a monthly column for Field & Stream about the questionable activities of a rural New Hampshire sportsman’s club called “The Lower Forty.”

Good old boys Judge Parker, Doc Hall, Cousin Sid, and the undertaker Angus McNab hung out at Uncle Perk’s General Store sipping Old Stumpblower and telling yarns in the intervals between expeditions against deer, trout, and what they referred to up there as “paatridge.” The inveterate adversaries of the members of The Lower Forty were the scheming, miserly, and hypocritical Deacon Godfrey and his reformist allies in the Sisters of Samantha Sewing Circle. I often feel that I have lived to see Deacon Godfreys everywhere in high office and the entire population, male and female, of the urban community of fashion carrying “Sisters of Samantha” membership cards.

The upper twenty percent in America have insulated themselves from the economic and cultural consequences of the last fifty years. Meanwhile, those in the bottom half must live in disintegrating communities and endure the consequences of declining social capital. They sense, intuitively, that our leadership class has a narrow, materialistic view of life and a ruthless, managerial approach to “diversity” that undermines social solidarity, which is why they resonate with patriotic rhetoric that actually envisions all of us together, committed to a common good. Meanwhile, they see that their “betters” have rigged the game, so much so that even the slightest dissent from political correctness brings fierce, disciplining denunciations.

As I’ve written elsewhere (and often) we are living in a remarkable era. Our ruling class has re-invented itself as a technocracy that justifies its power by claiming moral superiority—and which dismisses challengers from below as morally deficient. We haven’t seen this kind of moral attack on working people since the salad years of the Temperance movement, another era when the well-off thought little of entering the public square… to denounce the moral depravity of the working man.

Rolex Datejust 18K Gold & Stainless Steel with Champagne Dial

My kindred-spirit boutique blogger, Bird Dog of Maggie’s Farm, brought up the rather personal subject of which watch you wear yesterday in a post titled: Life in America: I feel naked without a watch.

Bird Dog noted that lots of young people these days have given up the now century-old habit of wearing watches.
They are all carrying around with them smartphones and tablets and laptop computers all of which tell you the time with greater accuracy and precision than your wristwatch.

The wristwatch came into being during WWI, when officers started mounting small pocket watches, their faces covered with metal grids to protect them, on wrist bands. It was easier to check the time by glancing at your wrist than to fish out your watch at the end of chain from your pocket, and wrist-carried watches were less likely to be dropped and damaged or lost. Wearing a wristwatch made you seem like a gallant and technologically up-to-date officer commanding troops, so naturally everybody soon wanted one.

I wasn’t going to respond to this, finding myself, unexpectedly, out on the extreme edge, but today Gerard van der Leun linked Bird Dog’s post so, what with both of my closest blogging relatives (elite-educated, highly-intelligent, libertarian) commenting, I feel obliged to participate.

My first real watch was given to me in something like 5th grade as an inheritance by Aunt Rose when my Uncle George passed away. His watch was a Tissot, an unpretentious, gold-filled watch, which did happily have a date. Tissot is a kind of cheaper, second-brand manufactured by Omega, in the same way Rolex also makes Tudors. I wore that watch in school, working construction, hunting and fishing, right up through college. I had to get it cleaned and repaired a few times. The main problem was the vulnerability of the crystal which was always getting scratched and cracked.

Uncle George’s watch finally simply expired of great old age. It was flopping around loosely in its case, so my better half went out and got me a new Tissot as a Xmas or birthday present, and I wore that watch for another decade or more. It, too, finally broke beyond fixing, and when I looked for a new suitable Tissot, I just could not find one I liked. So I bought a Timex.

The Timex was cheap, but I found that a Timex watch only ran for six months to a year, and then you had to go out and get a new one. This was kind of irritating, so I started thinking about buying a real watch. I had run into negative comments a couple of times from high-rolling friends from Yale about my failure to wear an appropriately expensive time-piece. There was, for instance, the time an art-dealing friend asked me to impersonate a buyer in order to help him flim-flam some sleazy European competitor. He actually made me remove my Tissot and put on one of his own high-end watches for the imposture.

Another friend (who runs hedge funds) consulted with me at length while trying to decide between a mere Audemars Piguet Royal Oak or a truly obscenely expensive Patek Philippe.

I began to feel that I may have been letting down the side with my cheap watches.

A bit over twenty years ago, I broke down and bought what I considered the basic expensive watch: a Rolex (see above). I liked the Rolex’s indestructible sapphire watch crystal with the little magnifier over the date number, and I liked the Rolex’s ability to work well as both a sports watch and a formal evening wear watch. I paid a lot of money for it, but (Ho! ho!) a mere pittance compared to what they want for one this year.

I was, it turns out, mistaken about an expensive Rolex marching on forever without repair. After 5 to 10 years, your Rolex will stop self-winding. It will be grotty and its metal will be all scratched up. You will need to send it in to be cleaned. If you send it to Rolex, you will be sorry. Rolex, these days, will charge you most of a grand for an *official*, authorized Rolex cleaning and repair with genuine, certified and pedigreed Rolex parts.

But there are out there, unofficial, outlaw watch specialists who will do your $1000 Rolex clean and repair (using non-official, unregistered, unbaptized, but perfectly effective substitute parts) for around $300. Your watch will come back running like a watch and looking brand new. They can polish away all the dings and scratches.

My last cleaning was done by the no-longer-young Santa Monica watch dealer Lance Thomas, the guy who shot and killed no less than five hold-up men in self defence. Lance is semi-retired. He doesn’t actually clean watches himself, but he gets it done right. He calls his operation The Watch Company. Lance also successfully cleaned and repaired Karen’s Girard Perregaux.

Do you need a high-end wristwatch? Clearly, less and less so these days, but it is true that there are certain circles where people are going to look at your wrist and take the watch you wear as a potential indicator of your social status and your business and financial credibility. I would not want to go into a meeting to pitch some serious VC guys wearing a Timex myself, but I’m sure there must be plenty of uncouth contrarians who do.

There is also the argument in favor of the expensive watch that the only jewelry men get to wear are a wristwatch, cufflinks (and I’ve come to detest cufflinks), a lighter (and who smokes anymore?), and a wedding ring.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

At James D. Julia’s Winter Fine Arts, Asia, Antiques Auction, February 3,4, & 5, 2016, Lot 2026:

EXTRAORDINARILY RARE AND HISTORIC REVOLUTIONARY WAR POWDER HORN USED BY MINUTEMAN OLIVER BUTTRICK AT BATTLE OF CONCORD, APRIL 19, 1775.

In untouched, original condition and inscribed “Oliver Buttrick, OCT. 1774”, this important powder horn was carried at the first battle of the American Revolution. Early in April, 1775 word was passed on to the British command that rebel colonists had amassed arms and powder now hidden in Concord, MA. Lt. Col. Francis Smith was commander of about 700 British army regulars in Boston and on the morning of April 19th an expedition would march from Boston to Concord to capture and destroy these arms. Word of this action was discovered by the colonists and immediately spread to local militias. One of those individuals responsible for the alarm was Paul Revere who was immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in the poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”. The British arrived at Lexington first, however the minuteman militia had not had ample time to assemble in force and fell back. The British regulars then moved on to Concord. Concord however, was a different story. Enough time had passed so that a large contingent of minutemen had been alerted and a formidable force held the North Bridge in Concord defying the British regulars. The confrontation eventually erupted into gun fire which became known as “the shot heard round the world”. This historic battle is known as the first true major military engagement of defiance from the colonists with the British Empire. As such some consider it the most important military engagement in the annals of the evolution of the United States. Young Oliver Buttrick was one of seven Buttrick family members to join with other minutemen in this historic conflict. Oliver’s uncle, Major John Buttrick led the advance at the Old North Bridge that day. As referenced in his detailed pension application of 1834, Oliver was in David Brown’s Company and served alongside his brother William, who was killed three weeks later at Bunker Hill. Fellow Minutemen that day included Abiel Buttrick, Daniel Buttrick, Tilly Buttrick, Willard Buttrick and John Buttrick, Jr. (the 14-year old fifer). …

Oliver Buttrick fought in such celebrated arenas as Point Shirley, Bennington, Ticonderoga, Fishkills, and Soldiers Fortune (near West Point). He also performed guard duty on a prison ship in Boston Harbor. The date on the horn is significant. Unrest among the Patriots started years before this first skirmish. In the summer and fall of 1774, rebellion was at fever pitch. In fact, on October 4, 1774, the recently formed Massachusetts Provincial Congress issued what amounted to its own declaration of independence and on October 24, 1774, that same angry and determined Congress authorized the procurement or armaments. 18th Century American soldiers and militiamen identified their horns with their name and often the date it was made. The use of inked vellum under glass lens was a rare form of decoration and seen on only a few other 18th Century examples. This powder horn is among the few existing objects that can be directly associated with the first Battle for American Independence and to our knowledge this powder horn is the only Colonial horn used at this historic confrontation to ever be offered for sale. In fact, to our knowledge, nothing used by a minuteman at the Concord engagement has been sold at auction in many years. …

CONDITION: Very good with original surface, minor cracking and chipping near lip. Wood bezel has two chips which are well patinated as can be seen in photos and glass cover lens has a vertical crack. Original bailing wire loops are still present with smooth iron patina. 49789-5 (20,000-50,000)