I, for one, will await the blooper reel showing the guy completely botching an average of 19 takes, Jackie-Chan style, before finally rolling the natural 20 that gets shown in the edit.
Letâs have a cup of tea.
Are you talking about fast passes?
This was a fast pass, I believe:
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Ah yes, that should have been, âWeâve talked about this enough, letâs have a cup of tea.â
But it would probably have been green tea. I hardly consider green tea to even constitute⌠waaait a minute.
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At least he gave it a shotâŚ
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Not sure I followed all this correctly, but in case I did not, The one hand clapping koan is from Hakuin Ekaku, not Confucius. It is Japanese, and yes Zenâs roots extend back to China, Now where is my motorcycle and mirror.
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From an empty cup? 
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I didnât say that I donât believe, only that it is hard to believe - personally I enjoyed the video and Larsâ speed archery, and found geekdadâs take down an unnecessarily harsh character assassination rather than a critique. Even if he might have points regarding the historical accuracy (despite that modern competitive archer has little to do with historical archery and its many traditions) - he loses credibility and it reflects more on McQuarrie than Lars.
Not to mention McQuarrieâs hypocrisy. He accuses Lars of being sloppy with facts, but McQuarrieâs hate vision is so strong canât even get the facts about the video straight.
Really, Jim MacQuarrie?
Letâs look at the video you are ranting at about 3:15.
Thatâs Lars shooting at 3 targets from what looks to be half the width of a soccer field, which, if itâs a minimum regulation width of 70 meters, means Lars is shooting from a distance of at least 35 meters. Lars shoots three targets in a row, while walking backwards, in under 3 seconds.
Fuck you Jim MacQuarrie.
Iâm rarely so profane in expressing my thoughts, but McQuarrieâs rant is so hateful, hypocritical, and inexcusably sloppy with the facts it just really, really pisses me off. And it pisses me off that he tricked Xeni into thinking his post was authoritative.
The narration in the Lars Anderson video does have some possible errors, but any potential legitimate points were lost when MacQuarrie decided to go on a trend riding, click baiting, hate filled rant rather than writing a fact-based, citations provided rebuttal. And I risk falling into the same trap in calling him out on it, but I think, unlike MacQuarrie, my conclusions are supported by easily verifiable facts and citations. The very video MacQuarrie is complaining about has an example that rebuts his claim.
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well, if heâs clickbaiting, Iâve lost any interest in his blog. I also think he was annoyed by the hollywood-gets-it-wrong slant as he likes to say heâs been an advisor to movies etc., because often Hollywood really does get it wrong. Wearing a sword on the back looks good until you try to take it out, holding a gun sideways when firing, people flying back when hit by a gunshot etcâŚ
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Yup, Hollywood does get archery wrong a lot, and that annoys Jim MacQuarrie, which is ironic, because one of the enduring Hollywood movie myths is the back quiver, etched into the modern consciousness in the 1939 Errol Flynn movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood. Yet when the Lars Anderson video stated ââThe back quiver is a Hollywood myth,â MacQuarrie went ballistic.
[quote=âJim MacQuarrieâ]This howler is put forward in the middle of Andersenâs ridiculous infomercial-like demonstration of whatâs supposedly wrong with the back quiver. All it needs is an exasperated voice-over saying âhas this ever
happened to you?â The back quiver is not a Hollywood myth, itâs a historically-documented method of carrying arrows, [/quote]
Really, Jim? Whereâs your citation? A link, perhaps, showing the popularity of backquivers in Medieval times? Jim just asserts it.
Letâs take a look at something other than Jimâs imagination. Here is a detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, one of the few contemporary depictions we have of medieval military archers with quivers:
The tapestry shows nine archers wearing side quivers. And it shows a single archer wearing what appears to be a side quiver around his neck, not a diagonal strap across the chest. Instead of proving that back quivers were use in medieval times, the tapestry shows what may be the only contemporary depiction of a European using a back quiver, and even that is questionable, and looks like a side quiver temporarily worn around the neck.
Anglo-Norman Studies XXII: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1999 describes the depiction of the way the odd ball quiver was worn as âvery unusual, if not uniqueâ and that back quivers would be of more use to hunters than military archers - pretty much what the Lars Anderson video points out.
So, yes, the back quiver in medieval times is pretty much a Hollywood myth, but they did exist. This is consistent with the video narration: âThe back quiver is a Hollywood myth, and was not common in the pastâ {emphasis mine} The video did not claim back quivers didnât exist, only that they werenât common, the opposite of Hollywood depictions.
Jim dishonestly quote mined the video in his polemic take down, cutting off the qualifier, âwas not common.â
So, again, fuck you Jim MacQuarrie.
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When I start looking for information on Mongolian styles of archery I find many videos depicting shooting just like the videos creator did. Here is one:
Also, there is a wikipedia article on mounted archery that indicates that many (but not all) used the style of bow in left hand, arrow on right of bow:
I think there is way more to the video makers video than this article gives him credit for.
Search for Mongolian archery and youâll find plenty of videos of folks holding the bow similar to how he does and even holding surplus arrows in their hands. Here is one:
Hungarian horsebow archer Lajos Kassai, who Anderson references, is very impressive. His fast shooting from the back of a galloping horse viscerally demonstrates just how devastating skilled horsebow archery is. That he can ride and shoot quickly and accurately is remarkable, yet those skills might have been the norm for mounted archers.
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Ah, yes, the horrifyingly bad asymmetrically limbed Japanese longbow. Note the apparently random floating draw point, much like Lars Andersen displays.
The Samurai had to develop what we now call âZen archeryâ in order to overcome the inherent limitations of their craptacular bow technology, compensating amazingly effectively through superb training and technique. The asymmetric bamboo longbow is almost like the opposite of a crossbow (which uses technology and craftsmanship to decrease the archery learning curve).
OK, random archery-and-history-buff trivia moment! The expression parting shot (used to refer to a conversational bon mot delivered as one departs, preventing the recipient from responding in kind and hopefully leaving them sputtering) is a corruption of parthian shot, which refers to the Persian practice (documented by the Romans and Greeks) of firing en masse over their horseâs butts while galloping away.
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Why in the world would they build such a thing? Couldnât have been because they were simply too short to use the bow length they wanted unless they leaned over a rampart or stood on an apple-box. Seems to me that even a beginning bow-maker would very soon recognize the inherent flaw in the design, and youâd never see one of those outside of an apprenticeâs discard pile⌠and yet there they are.
Do you know what their thinking was?
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Yes, I do, and you actually already guessed it. The Japanese were a short people - I believe theyâre a bit taller today - and the material they were using (bamboo) is sorely lacking in the characteristics that make a powerful, reliable bow. To get the power needed to penetrate even the weakest Japanese armor they had to make very cumbersome large bows, so large that they couldnât be used to shoot at a downward angle unless the bowyer put the handle off-center and made the lower limb shorter. Archery is important in fortress defense, and also Japan is mountainous⌠so a bow that canât shoot downwards is worse than an asymmetric one.
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How 'bout that. Hmm. Well, hereâs my next question, since I know so little of such things, I hope youâll pardon my ignorance: Is there any reason why they couldnât hold a symmetrical large bow sideways? Does that inhibit accurate/powerful shooting, or does it just interfere with your neighboring archers?
