Swiss National Day

Happy Birthday, Switzerland. Thanks for all that you do.

I call your cheese theme and raise you a knife:



How the Swiss Army Knife Was the iPhone of Its Day. Apparently Victorinox still sells 25 million of these a year. The question to ask Artler is, is this too much knife?

That is not a knife, it's a toolkit. 

I have a variety of knives, all single blade a few of the smaller ones, a 6 inch drop point with scales made from trees from the Confederate Cemetery in Fayetteville,  5 inch blade or less are folders and handy as built for a pocket knife. Others include a WWII katana my father brought back from Guadalcanal 3 Bowie with blades from 12-18 inches and a newly purchased latter Damascus kukri with a 10 inch blade. 

Looking for a Gladius in the 20-25 inch range must be Damascus 

Here is a photo of a somewhat typical Kukri although it is much more refined looking than what I have seen.

My brother had one when I was a teenager. It must have been about 50 years back. As I recall, the two smaller knives were used to sharpen the large knife. I also believe that there is some rule with the Gurkhas that if the knife is withdrawn from its sheath, blood must be drawn. This being the case, they would give themselves a nick to follow the rule. 



This looks more like the one my brother had. 

In skilled hands it is one of the most dangerous weapons man can wield, but the same goes for the katana. The forward bend of the kurki makes it a superb weapon for offense. It will do the job it is intended to do. A man or woman with one easily can defeat the 15 feet rule of gun v knife and win. 

In the hands of the right person, I can believe it. The katana looks nasty as well. I've read more than a few Japanese detective books. I don't recall them using that word. But maybe they did.

The Gurkhas were an integral part of British Armed Forces from the early 1800s (1811-15?) until something like 20-30 years ago, when the British Army went through a reduction of forces.  In order to save the famed group from going extinct, as I recall, the Sultan of Brunei decided to employ a battalion. Lee Kwan Yew aka Harry Lee, already had a bodyguard of Gurkhas. I don't what their numbers are today. 

My wife used to encounter a fair number of Gurkhas in Singapore when she was working with handicapped children. Apparently the Gurkhas have a significant percentage of handicapped children. I don't recall why, but wouldn't be surprised if it had to do with too much intermarriage in villages. 

Who would have thunk it, a Vietnamese mohel.    To take three slugs from a .45 1911, and still move shows motivation. 

True story. A friend who I met in Tokyo in the fall of 1979, had a son while he and his wife lived in Hongkong in the late 1980s/early 1990s.  He could not find a mohel in Hongkong so he had to fly one in from Manila to perform the briss.  The son now works for some big finance group in Chicago. 

There once was a boy who was skittish,
When his mother had told him in Yiddish,
"That foreskin must be gone, 
But's there's no one in Hongkong
From Manila we'll bring the mohel Weissfisch."