USSR: Red Army Cavalry 1938 Model ‘Carbine’ (17.5.2022) 

The concept of the ‘carbine’ may well have originated during the late 1500s in France and referred to the weapon these ‘Light’ Cavalrymen used to carry. In this instance, this may well have been a ‘slang’ term used in the French language which referred to mounted archers from Flanders who were considered deadly shots and sure bringers of ‘death’! (The association is unclear but may refer to an assumed connection between the ‘carrion beetle’ and the ‘plague’, etc). Whatever the origin, a ‘carbine’ appears to refer to a ‘short’ and highly effective weapon carried when sat in the saddle and used when riding the horse whether into or out of battle. The 1938 ‘Carbine’ Model measured just 1020 mm (or 3.4 feet) long (minus a bayonet) – and fired a round measuring 7.62 mm! The ‘Carbine’ Model 1938 was sighted to fire up to 1000 meters! The Izhevsk Machine-Manufacturing Plant was the only place equipped for producing this ‘Carbine’ between 1941-1942 – during the height of the ‘Great Patriotic war’ – when the workers of this factory produced over 1,106,510 which were sent immediately for frontline service! 

Emails: Dream Analysis – the Thames Embankment Cat (15.12.2020)

A dead cat may not be what it first appears to be. Hang on a minute – I said the cat wants me dead – not itself! Yes – but if we go down that path – then your cat kills not only yourself – but also my argument – holy water or not! How could a cat kill you? By dropping a bus of schoolchildren on your head. Is it a likely outcome? I doubt the cat could get the children to co-operate or indeed arrange for the bus to be raised into place in a manner that no one would recognise what is happening until it is ‘too late’. Louis wain could be of help here – but let’s face it – he could not do much to help himself past the continuous replication of ever more fragmented depiction of cats, as interested as they most obviously are. As a Physicist, I suspect Schrödinger’s Cat has something to do with a clash of civilisations. Is the cat ‘alive’ or ‘dead’? Does the Black-White cat want you alive-dead? Are you inhabiting a box – or observing a box? Is the box the bus – and more importantly – why is there no indication of appropriate ‘social distancing’? I also find it curious that there is no presence of ‘steps’ or ‘star-wells’. Having walked up and down the Thames Embankment more times than I care to count – no buses (or cats for that matter) frequent the banks upon which the mighty Thames doth lap… 

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