Sitting In A Hot Seat

That's A Metaphorical Hot Seat, Gentle Readers
Mine only ever gets warm thanks to it's close proximity to the radiator.

Not that warm, Art

     Anyway, what I refer to today is another pyramid scheme, after the concept was introduced yesteryon.  A pyramid scheme, lest you be unaware, is a scam where the people at the top earn riches whilst the people at the bottom end up penniless.  Typically the people at the top recruit lesser peons who pay them money, for the sheer privilege of belonging to Purple Wim Wam, Inc.  

Close enough

The peons try to recruit more peons, so that they may rise above peonhood and become bosses in their own right.  The whole thing is camouflaged by Pretending To Sell Something, and the bosses at the top go to bed each night wondering if the authorities aren't going to be waiting on the doorstep come morning.  So, gentle readers, pyramid schemes ("Multi-Level Marketing" to be both formal and euphemistic) are to be avoided!
      Thus we come to Burn Lounge, who were supposedly a music marketing and management entity, where folks could download music.  Art?

Translation: "Crook"

     Here an aside.  I used to watch "Burn Notice" but stopped watching after (I think) the first season, since it seemed as if the producers were going to keep shifting parameters and ensuring Our Hero never got to the bottom of anything.

4 seasons?!

     It did have Bruce Campbell in it, which is always a plus.
     Anyway, back to BurnLounge.  It tried to look as if it was a version of LimeWire crossed with Spotify, and whilst you could make money by selling music to subscribers, the big bucks were in selling more BurnLounge memberships.  However, the way the site, memberships and organisation was structured meant 94% of all members lost money.  The people at the top made about £18 million, until the Federal Trade Commission (South Canadian scrutineers) declared the whole thing an illegal pyramid scheme and closed it down.
     BurnLounge appealed.  They lost*.
     BurnLounge appealed again.  They lost, again*.  In fact it's a wonder they bothered with a second appeal, since they were shot down in flames, and in pieces, and very small pieces at that, in the original trial in 2007.  The FTC then started to re-imburse those who had been scammed, whilst BurnLounge put up a rather pathetic page-holding page on the Internet.  Art?

Yeah, right.

     Designed, one feels, to soothe the egos of the bosses, as this same screen has been floating around for ten years now with no sign of another BurnLounge.  Isn't that strange?  Well, not really, as they seem to have gone the way of successful pyramid schemes - an initial surge of incredible business, which draws the eyes of the authorities, an investigation, and then the whole thing collapses.  If you, as one of the bosses, manage to stay out of prison, you're not going to set the market alive subsequently.
     So there you have it, and how we got today's title, and isn't analysing human greed and duplicity fascinating reading? 

Tee Hee*!

     Now, motley, you know teabags are killing the planet, right?  So shall we bin all ours and go for All Loose-Leaf status in the Kitchen Of Doom?

The Villar-Perosa If you don't like stuff about guns, now is the time to go make a pot of tea - LOOSE LEAF OF COURSE! - because this is very gun-y.

A rather jazzy Italian bomber
(See below)

     When the First Unpleasantness began, Italy brazenly sat it out, stating that, because it's partners Germany and Austro-Hungary had done the attacking, the Sunny Republic didn't need to join in.  Later, frankly bribed by the Allies, they joined the Allies, which is only sensible and logical.
     Anyway, they had this Caproni bomber, see, which was armed with a twin-gun arrangement, okay, that had an extremely high rate of fire, right?  Art?

There it is

     You need an extremely high rate of fire (hereafter EHROF) in aircraft guns because the opposition is going to be whizzing past at hundreds of miles per hour, so you've got very little time to aim and pull the trigger.
     Some bright spark got the idea of using the dismounted defensive machine-guns in a ground role, where, because it used 9 m.m. (apologies for not using our usual noble Imperial measurements) ammunition, i.e. pistol bullets not rifle bullets, it is sometimes termed the first sub-machine gun.  Art?

Gun Jesus!

     I bring this up because Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons got his hot sweaty hands on one, a very rara avis indeed, and proceeded to fire it.

Ian in firing pose

     Wow!  It went BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT and then both magazines were empty, the result of a 1,500 rounds per minute rate of fire and only having 25 bullets in each magazine.  Ian conjectured that the gunner would fire off one magazine at a time, whereupon his assistant would remove the empty and put in a full one.  It has been described as being "surprisingly effective", which one can understand - if you were standing in the way of 50 bullets coming your way in all of two seconds, you'd either be perforated or running.

The evil little beast

     Enough of guns and crime!  Let us now look at -

Detroit
We had a question at Pub Quiz - started poorly and got better, thank you for asking - that had everyone scratching their heads and guessing.
     "If you travel directly south from Detroit, which country do you first come to?"
     Good question, eh?  Naturally everyone discounted Canada, so the issue must be a country in Central or South America, and Conrad was desperately scratching his head trying to think of lines of longitude.
     What's the answer?
     Canada!
     It sounds counter-intuitive, but geography will out.  Art?

There you go.

     Just barely, but just barely is enough.
Finally -
Here's another Pub Quiz question that I suspect nobody got, though Steve The Quizmaster insisted we'd been asked it before.  I don't remember it, and it's not in my little notebook where I write down the questions (yes I am a sad pedantic hair-splitter).
    "In the Caribbean, what kind of animal is a Mountain Chicken?"
     The answer, as I found out when I put my sheet in for marking, is not "Weasel".      It is, in fact, a kind of frog.  Art?

Big sucker, eh?

     The name comes because, allegedly, it tastes like chicken when roasted, which has led to the locals eating it almost to the point of extinction.  We will have to take this on trust, as BOOJUM! is not going to test the veracity of such statements.

Hop it

*  Tee Hee!