Most dark ages peasant knives were about the size and shape of a modern chef's knife. This is the "knife" part of the halberd, bow, and knife peasant fighting style I described in Pleasantry of the Peasantry:
Typically the size (and shape) of a modern chef's knife, they were sometimes the size of a machete. The Tres Espadas logo has a Gladius, a Cutlas and a Kukri, all of which have machete and large knife variations:
At Tres Espadas we have a very high emphasis on learning to fight with the large knife (Bowie knife or chef's knife,) and in fact it is the first skill set we suggest beginners learn:
Just as the bauernwehr above was ubiquitous in the dark ages, chef's knives are ubiquitous in domestic kitchens throughout the USA (and many other parts of the world.) The bauernwehr was considered the critical home defense tool of it's day, and the founders of Tres Espadas see the chef's knife to be a critical home defense weapon in today's world. It is one thing to praise the 2nd Amendment's supposed guarantee of home defense through firearms, it is another thing to encourage universal home defense through the study of chef's knife self-defense techniques.
Most indoors confrontations are close range. Knives can have significant advantages over guns at close range:
Most homes don't even have a gun. Of the homes with guns, few gun owners actually go out and practice using their weapon at the firing range, meaning they are almost completely incompetent with the weapon. Of those who actually bother to train with their guns, fewer still go hunting, do Airsoft, play paintball, or do any other training against live targets who don't want to be shot. (The founders of Tres Espadas do know gun owners who take their semi-auto rifles to the range frequently and have been on highly competitive paintball teams, but we think this level of training represents far less than 1% of the gun owners in the USA.) People seriously interested in home defense should give chef's knife self defense techniques serious study:
If you are a skilled gunslinger, the one other thing to consider about the chef's knife besides its ubiquity is its silence. Almost anything you do with a gun makes noise, where as a chef's knife can be handled very quietly. A well trained and prepared knife fighter at close range can take a home invader without altering other possible armed accomplices he may have.
One person's opinion is only worth so much to another person. For me, when it comes to general quality, a simple "good" or "bad" is not enough detail. However a 1 to 10 scale gives a lot of subjective options and precision without giving us much more information than simply "good" or "bad." For this reason, I have a strong preference for a 4 star scale when asserting general quality something. Here's what the four stars mean:
One star* means something is bad. If we are talking about food, it is unpleasant to eat. If something is bad or unacceptable, we don't need to know just how awful it actually is, knowing it is not good enough, is good enough.
Two stars means that something is passable. If it's food it is edible, but not particularly good. The four star scale doesn't need an odd-middle scale for neutrality, because two stars IS the neutral rating - passable, but not especially tasty. If you say that something is "good, but not very good" that caveat means you are really talking about two star quality.
Three stars means something is very good or excellent. Notice that with food you either really like it or it is just edible, basically no space inbetween. Most of the stuff you "really enjoy" is three stars.
Four stars is for that which stands above other excellent things as favorites, classics, incredibly focused, uniquely enjoyable or particularly amazing in some way. This is the food that is so good you have to tell your friends about it (or maybe so good you are tempted to hide it from them.) It is not important how amazing you think something is, if it is amazing we know you think it is above and beyond most other excellent things. Four stars however does not mean perfect - nothing is perfect, because your perfection will have flaws for someone else, so don't be exclusive about the four star rating, if something is truly great, give it the four stars it deserves.
*Note there are no "half stars" in this system. When averaging multiple people's opinion, round. So if two people give a movie 4 stars, and their two dates give the movie 3 stars, (for an average rating of 3.5 stars,) that rounds to a 4 star movie (because it really entertained 4 people and amazed half of them. When converting Likert scale to 4 star scale, subtract one level and count both 0 and 1 as 1 star, and see the last sentance of #4 above.)
The farther something rises, the farther it has to fall. When something achieves 4 stars, often serious risks have been made, new things have been tried, or great effort has been focused on achieving a specific vision. This means truly amazing things are on the verge of being horrible, bad, one star. The "cycle of excellence" means that one star is just as close to 4 stars as 3 stars is, this goes in a loop, or cycle. For example with food, a truly amazing dish was probably at higher risk of becoming an inedible mess than simply very good food. The implication here is that if something is universally loved without critics, it is very likely 3 stars rather than 4, because one person's 4 stars could easily be another's 1 star.
Note that when it comes to efficiency, the sweet spot to aim for is 3 stars. For example with food, if you prepare a 3 star meal everyone is happy: some find it simply edible, others find it amazing, and most are pleased with their simply excellent meal. Beyond this attempting a 4 star meal would have required more effort and resources. The cycle of excellence suggests that very good is the ideal, responsible thing to achieve, and that amazing masterpieces are more risky (that some may not even find edible.)
On this blog I have already used this rating system to evaluate martial arts and individual levels of racism. I have used it with children to evaluate the severity of various usage of profanity, and I often demand feedback on meals I have prepared for guests based on the 4 star scale. Do the world a favor and make the 4 star scale as ubiquitous as possible.
As a Tai Chi guy, people often ask me what exercises I know of that can help with back muscles. So here are my recommended exercises for strengthening the back, listed here in the order I would start trying these in if I were you:
0. First and foremost, do not do things known to strain your back. If getting arm-bar slammed bugs your back, don't get arm-bar slammed. Stop pushing 10 grocery carts at a time.
1. At least 15 minutes of standing meditation. Focus your mind on your breathing and intentionally relax the most tense parts of your back:
2. Stretches: Tight legs leads to a tight back. You should stretch after standing meditation anyways. If you don't have any serious stretching you are already into, I strongly recommend you take up doing a deep squat stretch (in addition to other common stretches,) the easy kind of deep squat with your back straight, your feet out 45 degrees and your heels on the ground, like the first stretch in this video:
3. If you do pushups right, they basically work your whole body. Besides strengthening the back pushups help a lot of muscular support systems for your back such as your core, shoulders, neck and upper legs. A good minimum goal for everyone is one set of at least 20 pushups:
4. Cardio: a leisurely stroll through the park is not cardio, but power walking, jogging and running is. Playing around in the swimming pool is not cardio, but doing laps in the pool is. Simply put you need to be doing 30 minutes of cardio, five times a week if you want your body, including your back, to feel like it is at optimal health.
Everyone has biases against those of other ethnicity. The question is what do you do about these biases? How effectively you approach this question determines, in my view, just how racist you actually are. Using a simple scale of 1 to 4 stars, here's how I would categorize an individual's level of racism:
One star are people who have a high level of awareness of their own cultural biases, they actively work to keep their own biases about groups of other ethnicity in check, and they actively use any privilege they have to keep their environment as friendly to people of all ethnicity as possible. These are people with a solid intellectual understanding around racism and actively work against racism. The best historical example of this is Dr. MLK Jr., the one with the holiday in most of the US.
Two stars are friendly people who focus on treating everyone equally, but who aren't particularly focused on issues of ethnicity. They openly recognize racism as a problem in our culture and address issues around racism as soon as possible before they become more problematic. Without meaning to, these people will frequently make minor social errors like bringing up others ethnicity in casual conversation.
Three stars are people who generally feel racism isn't a significant issue in today's society. These people are often out of touch with their own cultural roots, and have given very little thought to how their ancestor's behavior influences their behavior today. They frequently make major errors around diversity issues without realizing it, creating potential lawsuits against their employers. The vast majority of people who say "I am not racist" fit into this category.
Four stars are people who are overtly racist per say. For example they may exacerbate racial conflicts for political agendas, or belong to groups that have recently been known for being unfriendly towards specific ethnicity. These people are either very defensive of social errors they make, or they are making comments that are intentionally offensive. For example someone with a tattoo that identifies them as unfriendly to certain minority groups is most likely in this category.
The vast majority of the USA are 3 stars racist. The next largest group is 2 stars, then 1 star, and 4 stars racist is the smallest but yet incredibly common category. The number one thing that seems to reduce racism IMHO is education level, though I have certainly met more than a few PHD's who still fall into the 3 star category, and I have met 1 star activists who did not have much more than a GED level of education.
There's a lot of explanations of what the relationships between the various internal martial arts are, with lots of stories about ancient masters and inclusions of styles so obscure you will never encounter them. I am going to try here to summarize it in a way that only mentions common styles and their relationship to each other. First, understand what Tai Chi is: http://bfgalbraith.blogspot.com/p/what-is-tai-chi.html
Tai Chi comes from "Wudang Quan," which refers to the old Toaist Martial Arts, just like "Shoulin Kung Fu" refers to old Buddhist martial arts. Wudang Quan is practiced as a style today, and generally looks like a very fast and athletic form of Tai Chi:
Older forms of Wudang Quan also gave birth to the following martial arts styles, starting in the 1600's:
Chen Tai Chi
Other old-school Tai Chi like Chen but not Chen, like Wudang Dan Pai, Zhang, etc.
Hsing-I (a very linear style with a high emphasis on strikes)
Pa Kua (a very circular style)
In the 1800's Chen Tai Chi was mixed with Hsing-I and Pa Kua and highly standardized by the Yang Family, forming Yang Tai Chi. This became the most popular of all of these arts, and was spread far and wide in China. Yang Tai Chi then in turn gave birth to other styles of Tai Chi:
"Wu Shu" Tai Chi (has a low emphasis on application and sparring, and a high focus on aesthetics.) This is often called Yang Tai Chi but real Yang Tai Chi has a high focus on application and sparring, and its forms are focused on application rather than on performance aesthetics. Unfortunately this is the most common type of Tai Chi today, and is the style that gives Tai Chi a bad name.
Chi Kung is exercises originally taught in the Yang Tai Chi, but in Chi Kung no thought is given to application, sparring, or performance, it is only a set of fitness & meditation exercises.
Sun Tai Chi heavily elaborates on the movement in Yang Tai Chi, expanding it into more of an elaborate kung fu style.
Wu Tai Chi emphasizes application and sparring, it is a natural evolution of Yang Tai Chi and is most common style of Tai Chi besides Wu Shu Tai Chi.
All of these above 9 Tai Chi related martial arts are still practiced somewhat commonly today. The Japanese founder of Aikido was a student in China, and had exposure to at least one of these above martial arts there, and Aikido is the Japanese variant of the decedents of Wudang Quan, heavily influenced by various traditional Japanese martial arts.
Yi Quan comes from Hsing-I, and is highly abbreviated and focused on "the basic essentials."
In summary there are two general historical categories of internal martial arts. First are the styles that came before Yang Tai Chi: Chen Tai Chi, other old forms of Tai Chi, Wudang Quan, Hsing-I and Pa Kua. Second is Yang Tai Chi and those that developed at the same time or later, including Wu Tai Chi, Sun Tai Chi, Aikido, and Yi Quan.
Martial Artists success in fights is multi-dimensional, and doesn't come down to any one attribute:
There are 5 factors I look at in a martial artist to gauge their probably success in a conflict; skill, strategy, size, stamina and spite:
Skill is where martial artists excel. There are two considerations here: variety of skill and depth of skill. Keep in mind there's no such thing as a technique mastered outside of full contact sparring, so when considering the variety of techniques someone has, consider their sparring practices and what variety of techniques they often spar with. How perfected a technique is depends on how strong of opponents they are sparring and how much resistance can their technique overcome consistently.
Strategy covers those techniques not normally practiced in sparring, such as eye gouges and groin kicks, but also running away, using the environment to full advantage, situational awareness and so on. Non martial arts related activities such as team sports, study and gaming can build strategic thinking. If a nerd waits for you to use the urinal and comes out of the stall with a mechanical pencil between your shoulder blades, you just got outsmarted through strategy.
Spite is having an aggressive mental mind set that will assist you in doing what has to be done to win. Some call this "will to win," but there are many motivations and reasons to lack empathy that can increase spite in a conflict. Spite means you can't let yourself lose, there is too much on the line for you to let up on your opponent for any reason. Spite is your mental mindset beyond skill and strategy
Size matters a great deal in self defense. The two sizes mentioned in professional fighting are the two dimensions to pay attention to: body weight and reach. People who are larger than you are harder for you to hurt, and it is easier for you to be hurt by them, just because of simple physics. However superior reach gives your opponent options you simply don't have: this is obvious at striking range where you can easily be "out reached," but even on the ground grappling they have a wider variety of places they can grasp you than your grasping options, and often can land submissions on you that you can't do on them.
Stamina or in other words physical conditioning also plays a key factor, for two reasons. Most obviously the longer a fight goes on, the more stamina comes into play, and can completely determine the outcome of a fight if one fighter has poor conditioning. Less obviously and more importantly, the more stamina a fighter has, the more they can train and spar, and the more rapidly they can build skill.
Age can take its toll on all of the above, as less techniques become safe to spar with, strategic options decrese, wisdom overcomes mental brutality, bone and muscle density decay, and effectiveness of working out in the gym declines. Keep this in mind:
However some martial artists age faster as fighters than others, and that mostly comes down to how serious and frequently they are injured. One fighter might retire from MMA competition because of permanent injury in his late twenties, while another might not start competing until his early thirties. It is important to spar full contact, but it is also important to spar safely.
Let's take Brock Lesnar for example. With a background in real wrestling and money for the best private coaches around, Lesnar had formidable technical skill in the ring. Strategically he focused on exactly what was likely to win against each individual opponent, maximizing his personal advantages. He maintained a bully like fearless attitude that enraged critics and dominated in the ring. At six foot three and 286 pounds, he had superior body weight and reach. His stamina and conditioning is the stuff of legend, considered extreme even in the world of professional fighting.
From 2008 to 2010 he was the MMA fighter to beat, but then his health soured and he went back to professional wrestling after a few less impressive fights. The following is pure fiction portrayed by Lesnar, but illustrates the five fight factors:
My careful study of why I despise TKD so much led me to one conclusion: it's all about sparring practices. I don't care if you trained at Miletich if you were doing their non-sparring aerobic kickboxing class. Even worse is if you are a master of kickboxing because you trained under someone who trained at Miletich's non-sparring kickboxing class.
All light contact and no contact martial arts run the risk of being worse than no self defense training at all, since they could create bad habits that a completely untrained person may not have while giving no real actionable skill in return.
The name of a Martial Art is too broad, we need to look at individual schools. I trained at a Choy Lay Fut & Tai Chi school that eventually dabbled in MMA and boxing, while consistently training kickboxers, but your average Choy Lay Fut or Tai Chi school is not on that level. Likewise I have seen an Aikido school where students do Judo at the same school, but not all Aikido is on that level either.
My rating of martial arts is dependent on sparring quality and range of sparing. There are four ranges relevant to martial arts classes:
Grappling on the ground.
Grappling while standing up, including close range strikes like knees and elbows.
Striking standing up with punches, kicks, and weapons with very little reach like box cutters and brass knuckles.
Weapons with significant reach such as billy clubs and baseball bats.
When I say "full contact sparring," I don't mean contests where there is a permanent record and the object is to prove who has superior skill and strength, and participants do anything they can within the rules to win, that is "fighting." Full contact sparring means the participants are really trying to execute techniques against each other while fully resisting each other, and there is continuous action throughout the round, while the action is never broken up for more than a few seconds by the participants or onlookers. Many consider Kendo and Fencing to be full contact, I don't.
One star includes no contact/light contact* instead of real sparring is worse than nothing at all.
Two stars includes full contact* with extremely limited techniques: Olympic TKD, Boxing
Three stars includes full contact with a reasonable amount of techniques to master a general range of fighting: BJJ, Kickboxing, schools that compete in San Shou, Knock-Down Karate, etc.
Four stars includes full contact with a enough techniques to cover multiple ranges: schools competing in MMA, Sport Jujitsu, Pankration, etc.
To be "four stars," you really need sparring with three of the four above ranges. Two stars refers to schools that focus on only one range, or have extraordinarily restrictive rules in two ranges (such as wrestling having no submissions what so ever, Boxing no kicks, TKD no leg kicks or face punches.) It does not matter what range of techniques is covered by one-star schools because the sparring isn't serious enough to deliver skill superior to whatever bad habits they might be teaching.
This is a declaration of my love for industrial and my hate for the criticisms being leveled against Aesthetic Perfection in 2014.
I listen to more industrial music than any other kind of music, and strongly identify with the themes frequently presented in that music - studied those themes in college, and wrote a Masters Thesis related to some of those themes. Growing up in Bremerton I have been wearing a special blend of clothes seen as military surplus, hip-hop sports gear and office casual, as well as hair styles involving the 1/8 inch shear since long before they started selling imitations of that style to Nine Inch Nails fans at Hot Topic. My first CD I owned was the "Head Like a Hole" 60-Minute EP, before any of the music stores in my area carried "Pretty Hate Machine."
Industrial started with a highly experimental pre-disco band in the 70's focusing on what kind of music they could make if they threw aside the normal ways of making music at the time (electric guitars and other instruments) and focused on important yet ugly subject matter neglected by other music genres at that time. This band was Throbbing Gristle, and as designed, they were genuinely unpleasant to listen to (do not try to listen to all of this song unless you are feeling it right away):
The heavy use of electronics, the insistence of approaching subject matter directly without any sugar coating, the video back drop behind the band, carefully composed music, and the heavy use of musical experimentation are the hallmarks of this musical style. So called "industrial metal" bands are only worthy to be called industrial in so far as they embrace most of this tool set.
The band that took Throbbing Gristle's vision and turned it into a musical genre was Skinny Puppy. This band started off in the early 80's in a very ugly place, basically equating violence to animals with violence to humans. This band paved the way for more popular acts like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, and today is more prolific (including side project Ohgr) than those bands:
Starting with Skinny Puppy, individual songs on an industrial album are like a 20 second clip of a pop song, industrial bands don't write songs so much as they write albums, each song is only part of the whole album, and by itself is out of context.
In the 90's when industrial had its day in the spot light, it was very focused on dark themes mostly avoided outside of metal at that time. Consider Sister Machine Gun's "Nothing":
At this time there was a lot of Rap/Metal fusion going on, such as Public Enemy & Athrax's "Bring the Noise," and so at this time industrial was considered to have a "heavy hip-hop influence," which you can hear in "Nothing," but yet the over all album "Torture Technique" is clearly something beyond metal or hip hop both in its style and its depravity.
Understand that the Hip Hop of that era was itself more experimental and dynamic than what "gansta rap" would later become. Consider the industrial qualities of Sir Mix Alot's "Gortex":
If you haven't identified a few unrelated and ironic connections between this song and industrial music, listen to it again, paying attention to the electronics and content of the lyrics.
Industrial of this era was incredibly influential, heavily involved in movie sound tracks and pushing the use of electronics in other music genres. You probably wouldn't be able to pick Pop Will Eat Itself out of the industrial acts at that time, but one of it's band members went on to write one of the most important meme songs of all time, "Requiem for a Dream" (strong relation to the film of the same name):
Now think about this song for a second: is it not everything that industrial should be? Yes, it is probably THE industrial masterpiece. You can hear the anxiety, despair, frustration, and the all consuming urgency that it conveys without a single lyric, and it does this through the tool set established by Throbbing Gristle and Skinny Puppy.
Soon after Skinny Puppy started to be known in the music world there were parallel developments in Europe. They were not as constrained by American marketing definitions as industrial, so that when industrial's popularity fell in the USA, the music continued to evolve in Europe. This was "aggrotech," aggressive techno music, a type of industrial that evolved from disco, as opposed to predating disco. Consider Grendel's industrial classic "The New Flesh":
In that song you clearly hear the club/dance/rave elements. Remember when Depeche Mode got darker and darker album after album until "Violator" was released? That movement was the genesis of aggrotech/euro-industrial. But they didn't stop there, they radically experimented and continued to evolve the genre. The one ultimate example I would give of this is "Desperate Youth" by The Retrosic:
Notice that it is a natural continuation of the genre: massive amounts of dynamic innovation, similar themes to "Nothing" and "Requiem for a Dream."
European band Combichrist and related side projects most clearly define industrial today, with songs like "Throat Full of Glass":
Combichrist does not avoid or deny the hip hop influence on industrial music:
Incredibly prolific, some of their artists were involved in other projects, notably Panzer AG:
Notice the similarities between "Battlefield" and "Requiem for a Dream." Notice the actual singing in "Throat Full of Glass."
Here's where things get controversial in today's industrial scene - apparently if you aren't screaming with voice distortion, you are "selling out" and "not really industrial." These guardians of industrial style (or "GIS" for short) actually have a far more narrow definition of industrial than this, so much so that some of the more important works above would be disqualified from being industrial by their definition. Keep in mind that this trend towards singing is even embraced by the above mentioned Grendel, arguably with more intense effect than what their previous voice distortion vocals had:
If Depeche Mode's "People Are People," Tears for Fears's "Shout," or Eurythmics's "Sweet Dreams" came out the decade after "The Downward Spiral" instead of the decade before, they would have been classified as industrial.
Aesthetic Perfection is the most innovative major industrial act going today, and they are getting all kinds of flack for "not being industrial," and even for playing in front of audiences who are not already dedicated industrial fans. Even though numerous Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy/Ohgr songs have heavy piano elements, these GIS take huge issue with this Aesthetic Perfection song:
(Aesthetic Perfection did an excellent song, "Under Your Skin," using only human vocals as instruments on the same album.) Does "All Beauty Destroyed" fit into the genre of music started by Throbbing Gristle and established by Skinny Puppy? Careful how you answer because it's the same answer to this question: do you understand the industrial genre well enough to be able to say what is and is not industrial?
Aesthetic Perfection has PLENTY of aggrotech-style in other works, but in the songs and albums they are being criticized for, they are taking on industrial's most important obligation: to innovate. Aesthetic Perfection - like them or not - is the SALVATION of this genre, keeping it alive and growing, and from becoming an inbred inaccessible mess like Death Metal. More willing to play for audiences not already established as industrial fans than lot of other acts, their spreading the industrial gospel earns them my official title of "Industrial Messiah."
Industrial must continue to innovate in order to continue to be the king of musical genres. If we define industrial through static marketing terms, we are rejecting the tradition established by Throbbing Gristle and Skinny puppy - if it's not innovative, it's not industrial. Such narrow views blind us to industrial's future. Consider the following Tom Wait's song "Filipino Box Spring Hog," which has an industrial sound and is clearly on a level beyond most industrial being produced today:
Hip hop has some artists bucking marketing definitions as well. One of these acts - Die Antwoord - combines extremely aggressive rap with rave music - essentially a South African styled aggrotech - and seems to be lost on most industrial fans in spite of obvious industrial overtones in the art in some of their videos:
Be very careful, GIS, before you declare what is and is not Industrial.
Now this is a whole lot of very dark music I have mentioned here. How can I listen to so much of it? Well back in the early days there was religion-themed industrial that didn't "preach" (thankfully,) but had more progressive listener-empowering messages than say "The Downward Spiral," so I could mix in a little Mortal with my Sister Machine Gun. However in today's scene the progressive industrial band that really sticks out for me is Imperative Reaction. The first album they made that has the sound that they are developing now is called "As We Fall" and I have been listening to it a lot lately:
I recall one GIS online referring to this Imperative Reaction sound as "more electro-punk, not so much industrial, IMHO." Well his opinion was humble indeed, because you could say the same thing about Throbbing Gristle. If you think all industrial out there should basically sound like Psyclon Nine, then I have bad news for you: you aren't an industrial fan, you are just a fan of "bands that sound like Psyclon Nine," and you need to take it easy with your parent's credit card at Hot Topic.
There is a martial arts food chain, some martial arts are much better than others:
Here's the basic formula to understand: light contact martial arts < boxing/TKD (any full contact striking sport without knees in the clinch or without kicks to the leg) < kick boxing (any sport with full contact kicks to the leg and knee strikes in the clinch) < grappling < mixed martial arts.
This formula is sound and highly accurate: an MMA guy will typically take out a grappler with no striking, a grappler will typically take kick boxers off their feet quickly, while kick boxers consistently make short work of boxers, who in turn make short work of light contact martial artists.
The problem is it takes time, work, and often money to train in any of these martial arts. Depending on how dangerous an individual's natural instincts are, it's possible light contact martial arts could be worse for self defense purposes than no training at all! However once we get into the realm of full contact martial arts like boxing, training clearly trumps "killer natural instinct."
I categorize Boxing and Tae Kwon Do (as well as "American" kick boxing and Savate) as the least effective full contact martial arts, and suggest they are actually closely related:
Neither allow significant amounts of fighting in the clinch, depending on the referee to reset the match every time they get too close to each other.
Neither allow full contact kicks to the leg with the shin.
Both are injury prone (TKD practitioners suffer from frequent knee injuries, when boxers fight without glove hand injuries are common.)
Both are practiced first and foremost for sport and glory, and only secondarily for fitness or self-defense purposes.
Both tend to use very long stances inappropriate for most kick boxing, MMA sports, and self-defense situations.
Few who practice real kick boxing (with knee strikes and shin-to-leg kicks) ever expect to be famous or bring home trophies, be that sport San Shou, knock-down karate (Kyokushin, Enshin, etc,) Muay Thai or one of several other southeast Asian kick boxing sports:
Kick boxing delivers very efficiently in terms of time, energy, and money on its promise of fitness and self-defense skills. Nothing delivers on the martial arts promise of being able to take on multiple attackers like kick boxing.
More fundamental to any self defense situation however is a fighters grappling abilities:
Not all grappling styles are equal. Judo, once hailed as the only martial art anyone would ever need, becomes so bogged down with new rules every year that some are starting to question its relevance:
However grapplers, unlike previously mentioned martial arts practitioners, are almost always open minded enough to exchange ideas with grapplers from other sports. For example, most Brazillian Jui-Jitsu practitioners have exposure wrestling techniques not normally emphasized in their sport.
Mixed Martial Arts is what happens when grapplers get so open minded that they start adopting kick boxing techniques:
In a nut shell, the more like MMA your martial art is, the better off you will be. This is why when someone says "I have been thinking about doing Tae Kwon Do," I often reply "how about if you just Tae Kwon Don't." See also: http://www.bullshido.net/forums/archive/index.php/t-47730.html
I hate push ups. However in absence of another strength-training exercize, if you do them right, they are a much better than nothing at all:
Push ups are an indicator of minimum body strength. In general there are certain thresholds for how many push ups a person should be able to do. When I was doing kickboxing in the mid 90's, the standard held by some professional athletes at the time was 1 set of 100 reps or 3 sets of 50 reps. In particularly demanding martial arts such as Judo and Choy Li Fut, 1 set of 50 was considered a standard minimum to work for.
I have seen good arguments for 4 sets of 10 push ups as a minimum workout, and of course there's all sorts of workout routines that use different sets and reps of push ups. However, the least number of push ups I have seen as standard in any full contact martial art is 1 set of 20 reps.
1 set of 10 reps has in fact become a warning sign that the martial arts class is a no-contact "karate for kids" type waste of time. In general I would suggest to you that if you can't do 1 set of 20 push ups, you are not "in shape," (though just because you can do 1 set of 20 push ups does not mean you are in shape.) All people concerned with their health, male and female, should be able to do 1 set of 20 push ups, in my opinion.
When Purge 2 came out this summer agitators started suggesting we have a purge in real life. Here's an example that doesn't make me want to break my computer:
Just for the record, this is only a good idea if you want Salt Lake to replace Washington DC as the most important political city in the USA. Here's what happens:
1st Year: Mormons (already 25% prepper in the first place, still remember and study the violence around their own exodus from the United States,) come up with extreme game plans for the night of the purge, gathering around stake centers and building up walls (as per various Book of Mormon battles.) Mormons hunker down DAYS AND WEEKS before the night of the purge even begins. Mormons end up wasting a lot of jerks who thought it would be funny to taunt them in a threatening way. No LDS casualties, but Muslims have massive casualties.
2nd Year: Everyone is trying to figure out how they are LDS. Many convert spiritually, some claim cultural heritage, others become really-hard-core BYU football fans, huge movement of athiests claim transhumanist LDS religious status. They all also show up with resources to the LDS fortifications, which this year are far more extensive than before. LDS reach out to Muslims and pull them into their fortification projects. Few are stupid enough to challenge and taunt LDS fortifications directly, but get sniped from LDS fortifications anyways while causing trouble in near by neighborhoods.
3rd Year: Non-LDS religions have now figured out how to be part of Mormonism or they are losing membership fast. Non-LDS religions emulate the LDS efforts, but not as effectively, but still making the Purge far less effective for what it was intended.
4th Year: Mormons now control vasts purge-free areas, where no one is allowed inside the area unless they are anti-purge. In purge-free areas, religious jihad-type laws call for the death of anyone participating in the purge, long after purges are over. EVERYONE wants to live in these areas, and making Salt Lake happy is a priority for 90% of the voters n the USA.
At this point it's not just the Purge legislation that's getting scrapped, it's anything else Salt Lake doesn't like.
I last blogged on advice for reluctant bachelors looking to settle down, based on some epiphanies I have had around sex roles in society. Before I continue with my advice for the ladies, let me start by saying you do NOT need a man. If you want one, that's great, but you absolutely do not need one. This is the single most important thing for you to remember about finding a man: it is not possible for one person to give another person "complete happiness." That is hyperbole we use in romantic music in our culture, it is not literally true. Never burden a man with the responsibility of your happiness for two reasons:
Notice the three year old daughter making demands on her father: with in reasonable limitations he can improve her comfort and give her attention, but taken to an extreme she will wreck his ability to be happy when she is around, no matter how much he cares for her. As a female in a relationship with a male, you are constantly running the risk of crushing who he is, who he wants to be, his ability to care for himself, and thus his ability to care for you.
The three year old daughter can not be content until she decides to be content. Yes she certainly needs a certain amount of physical and emotional support from her father to be content, but if that is her only source of contentment she can not ever be content. If you depend on a relationship with a man to be your main source of happiness, you cannot be happy over a long period of time.
To understand why this is important for you getting a man, we now should look at my big epiphany that was the core of my last blog post:
In order for a man to impregnate a woman under normal circumstances, he MUST be attracted to her. A woman does NOT have to be attracted to a man to be impregnated by him. This means that a man has to initiate the first steps in the relationship, because only he knows who he is and is not attracted to. A woman then has to choose her best option from her list of suitors.
This is absolutely a generalization and very far from universally true. But ultimately if you go looking for a man, to succeed you must get a man you are after to become one of your suitors, or else biologically speaking, things aren't going to work out. There are then three ways to manage your list of suitors: 1) being efficient with your list of suitors, 2) going hunting for new suitors, and 3) attracting more suitors.
By being efficient with your suitor list, I mean taking a good look at the guys who you are already rejecting. Chances are your 'best friend who you just aren't that attracted to' has being hanging out with hotter females than you, and his interest in you is based on being realistic about what kind of life he wants to have. Your are physically attractive enough for him, and a cool enough person for him to spend his life with.
But you just find so many other more bad boy or more mysterious men more attractive. Think about how self-destructive that impulse is. Is it really wise to mate with a 'man of mystery?' What secrets does he hide that could negatively effect your long term happiness and the happiness of those you are responsible for? If you are so messed up that you can only get into 'bad boys,' do yourself and society a favor and get counseling to get cured of your thug love, because that is going to end very badly and have dire consequences for someone. Some men are wise enough to never date a woman who has ever dated thugs in her past - that laps of judgement shows a real disregard for the well being of anyone involved.
When it comes to hunting for suitors, do note that because of the epiphany stated above, this is the most difficult way to go about getting a man, the least efficient and most expensive in terms of your personal social capital and emotional resources. Should you go down this road, my suggestion is to follow three steps:
First befriend the guy you are interested in. Make very sure he is no longer 'mysterious' to you, and see if he passes the test of being someone who you enjoy to spending time with.
Drop a hint, but don't be subtle. You can't communicate with most men your feelings with body language and vocal tone. Don't give him an ultimatum either: that will warn his subconscious that you disregard his own personal agency and personhood, and kill his ability to be attracted to you. Approach it in casual conversation, something like "We are good friends. Have you ever wondered if we would make a good couple?" Get a conversation going - not necessary a serious-tone conversation - about the pros and cons of you being a couple. The hint you want to drop here is AFTER this conversation, say "Yes, it's a good idea. I think we should be a couple." This lets him have room to disagree, think about it, maybe change his mind, or maybe just agree outright.
Mother him. Guys are attracted to their moms. If you are able to do any cooking, cleaning or laundry for him, he will instantly start seeing you in more erotic terms, he can't help it. Get on his case about saving more money, or nag him about getting out to the gym. Demonstrate to his subconscious that you are going to cultivate his well being, not be a drain on it.
When it comes to attracting new suitors, physically speaking, contrary to the vast amount of marketing being directed at you personally, men are not attracted to your clothes, your make up, your perfume, your hair conditioner, your facials, your manicures, or any other products being sold to you. If you want to improve how physically attractive you are to men, exercise. I do not mean take your dog down to the park to relieve himself. Get into something serious that you enjoy, and make it a permanent non-negotiable part of your lifestyle, and make it something just as challenging as you can handle, such as some combination of: running, lifting weights, martial arts, Soccer, yoga etc. It should be something demanding enough that you find yourself doing extra physical conditioning outside of that activity so that you can get better at that activity. On a 1 to 10 scale, this is going to pump up your hotness by 3 points or so, guaranteed, over the course of the first year, and even more as time goes on.
The reason why women think men are attracted to skinny women is because the models used to sell women products are skinny. The reason why models are skinny is so that their bodies do not distract attention from the product. Men aren't physically attracted to the product, they are physically attracted to your body. Men are attracted to physically powerful women, we like curves that indicate health and prowess, almost regardless of weight and height.
But exercise demonstrates to a man something even more sexy: you realize that your happiness depends first and foremost on how YOU take care of yourself. Believe me when I say men are far more attracted to a normal body-mass-index woman going out for a morning jog, than we are to a anorexic girl showing off her new breast implants and fake tan on the beach.
Work on your personality and your finances. Be the person who you want to be. Think about how you treat others and ask yourself if you are good with the person in the mirror. Act in such a way that you are happy to look at yourself in the eye in the mirror.
Don't try to buy happiness. No man wants a relationship with a delusional uneducated wreck, but no man wants to settle down with crushing student loan debt either: have an education, but make it as affordable as possible. You can only get happiness through doing what you think is the right thing to do, and by appreciating what you already have, even though you could always use more. That secret to happiness is also the secret to getting a man.
I applaud and sometimes envy the proud bachelors who have decided they don't need to contribute further to humanity's gene pool, and this post is not for them. This post is for you single males who don't want to be single. You are the nice guys who want to settle down. You find Leykis 101 to be both offensive and inappropriate for what you want. You have experienced the reality behind the platitude "nice guys finish last."
But note you have also had some uncomfortable experiences where females expressed interest in you. Most likely they were attractive enough for someone, but not attractive to you personally. Yet you wish the right gal would come along and express interest in you, so this awkward phase of your life could be over.
From a scientific perspective, what you are doing is unsustainable. In order for a man to impregnate a woman under normal circumstances, he MUST be attracted to her. A woman does NOT have to be attracted to a man to be impregnated by him. This means that a man has to initiate the first steps in the relationship, because only he knows who he is and is not attracted to. A woman then has to choose her best option from her list of suitors. Reread this paragraph slowly and deeply ponder the implications.
You think you are nice because you play your cards close to your chest and don't constantly harass women with what you think of them. In fact you are just leaving them to drown with the Leykis 101 sharks, giving them less options because you are afraid of rejection.
Here's what you should do instead:
Be calculated. Yes you must be attracted to a woman, but make sure you are attracted to her for her personality qualities as well as her physical qualities. Is she smart enough for you? Thrifty enough for you? Don't get too picky, but know exactly why you like her, and make sure she will fit with what you want in life.
Proximity: Once you have identified a suitable woman, test the waters with casual friendship. Does she hold up to the test of being fun to hang out with? Relationships happen because people spend time with each other. If you hang out with her long enough, a relationship is likely to form.
Get aggressive. Tell her you like her, make a move. Make more moves. If she makes it clear she's not interested, check with her later to see she's changed her mind, "follow up." Before you give up, be perfectly straight with her: "I really like you, and I think a long term relationship could really work between us. I like you because [insert reasons from 1 and 2 above here.]" If a romantic relationship doesn't form after a few months, network (see if she has friends you try 1 and 2 above with,) and move on to someone else, starting with 1 above. If she objects to you networking with her friends or otherwise moving on, give her another chance: "I have started to see you as only a friend, because you aren't interested in me. It seems you are uncomfortable with me dating other people, are you sure you don't have feelings for me?"
Stay aggressive. You have to keep letting her know you value her in your life, or the relationship will deteriorate and disappear. You can't let your feminine feelings of needing to be wanted ruin your life or hers, and most long term relationships require much more aggression on the part of the man than the woman. Also, part of being aggressive is if it doesn't work out with one female (if a relationship ends, or if you are rejected before a real relationship forms,) you move on to someone else. Take notes of why you were rejected, and if there is anything you want to change about yourself, change as you move on.
If you can't get aggressive, the "why" you can't get aggressive is an important warning sign. For example if you are afraid to make a move because her husband might shoot you, well you shouldn't be going after married women in the first place. If you are scared because her biker son just got out of prison, then you need to be second guessing your math in step number 1 above anyways. Making moves on employees at work is a universally bad idea.
Don't second guess her taste in men. She knows what she wants, you don't. The way she experiences romantic love is different from how you do, largely because of the differences mentioned above. Never assume a woman is "out of your league," let her make that decision for herself.
"Friend" is not a bad word. You could have a virtually unlimited pool of "just friends" females if you wanted to, but that is not what you want. Give absolutely no heed to the notion that you might "ruin a valued friendship" by being aggressive. Do the world a favor and take indecent advantage of that friendship to pursue 1-4 above.
You are not a princess, so do not wish upon a star for a knight in shining armor to come save you. Rejection will hurt, but you will suck it up, because you are a man, and you will go on to the next one. Society, your future children and your future romance depends on this.
The solution to all the world's problems, with today's technology, is simple:
Teach them English.
Have them do Khan Academy in English.
This is THE long-term solution to the never ending crisis in the Middle East. This brings permanent peace to Africa. This ends hunger in East Asia. This fixes everything:
You can see from other posts on this blog that racism is very real to me, and that I take it very seriously. We all, especially whites, but everyone, need to keep their own racism in check and strive to be less racist, and stand up for others who are being racially discriminated against. We need to vote for politicians who take racism seriously. I have no doubt of this.
Most of us agree that one of the most serious problems with racism in our culture is stereotypes perpetuated by the media. But who owns the media, and who wants us divided along racial lines? Why would they want us divided?
In my mid 20's in the very late 90's, I went to live in the Pittsburgh area for a few years. I discovered in Alliquippa PA very segregated neighborhoods and a lot of racial tension. It turned out that the steel mill that used to be that town's main source of income had the town divided along racial lines, and that up to that point in 1998 it was still considered "unsafe" or "inappropriate" for whites go into he black neighborhoods (a norm I ignored and violated frequently.)
Later when I was studying the labor movement in college, I found that the captains of industry had divided their worker population along racial lines. At times this prevented white union organizers from visiting fellow black workers in their housing, because the housing was owned by the employers and whites were not allowed into the black housing areas. Race was literally used to keep the workforce from organizing.
Who owns the media, and why would they want us divided? What do they want us to not organize against? What do we all have in common that is so precious?
What they are controlling is our vote. What they are distracting us from is campaign finance reform. Why they are distracting us from campaign finance reform is government regulations have been put into place to literally make fantastically wealthy people richer to the detriment of everyone else (even most of the "1%.") Watch this:
But what can we do? What can just one vote do? It's not that simple, you can be extremely influential, don't believe that your donation or your vote does not matter, that is the lie they need you to believe. Here's an example of what you can contribute to besides simply voting, to make a difference:
We still have freedom of speech in the USA. Be loud about this, make sure every voter knows this is THE issue at hand. We get this taken care of, and solutions to climate change, immigration, public education, insane incarceration rates, cost of college, police brutality, health care, living wages etc. will be forth coming. Otherwise our own democracy will continue to be used against us.
In grad school the one thing they pounded into our heads more than anything else was "Reflective Practice," or paying attention to what you are doing so you can reflect and improve as you continue in what you do. If you have something interesting you are working on to share with the rest of us, I say it is a good Reflective Practice to write a blog about it. I have two examples I would like to point out here.
The first example is Jane, who discovered she was bipolar while taking psychology (a subject she has in interested in outside of school) courses at college. What she has said so far on her blog shows deep reflection and progression of thought, and in my opinion is a good example of reflective practice:
http://ourbipolarviews.blogspot.com/
As she continues her studies, I expect to see this blog to go in very exiting directions.
The second example is the blog of "Lord Rybec." He goes from ranting against stimulus in 2009 to in 2014 summarizing research that supports "basic income" as the solution to well, most of the problems in the USA, even from his conservative perspective. He has a lot of other insightful evolution of thought on subjects ranging from education to various health issues:
http://lordrybec.blogspot.com/
No doubt this blog will continue to entertain in the future.
If these two are Jedi of reflective practice blogging, I know a Sith. I met Sub Genius veteran Lance Miller in grad school, who decided to take his one-year graduate certificate and leave before completing the full master's program. The Center for Creative Change of Antioch University (or "C3") has a "Whole Systems Design" (or "WSD") degree that is basically technophobic/Luddite, but which attracts software professionals, creating a vast army of bitter drop outs and disgruntled alumni, but Lance was not content to just be another statistic:
http://progressive-positive.blogspot.com/
In 2007 he was bent on basically preaching heresy by the WSD faculty's standards, with blog posts like "Happy vs. Right" declaring simple contentment in one's own views was insufficient for survival, and generally supporting the status quo view that the WSD faculty despised using C3's own terminology and framing.
However by 2012 he had taken the same concepts he had differences with the Whole Systems Design C3 program over (namely that he thinks technology is good for humanity,) and pushed those ideas into more and more constructive directions, even synthesizing those beliefs with the religious views of others. At the height of this blog he published his manifesto as a very enjoyable and insightful book, "Athena Techne."
My final thought here is that technology more so than anything else has improved our ability to engage in "reflective practice." If any Luddites out there doubt this, try demonstrating your concerns without the internet, phones, radios, telegraphs, electronics, printing presses, pen and paper, mirrors, smoke signals, cave walls and blood, or serene puddles of water and see how effectively you reflect on your own or with others without technology.
I have seen people come of age and try to join society as adults for over two decades now, I have experience working with this population in our incarceration system, and I have an undergraduate degree in Human Services. In my opinion, the vast majority of the time when an individual is not able to make the transition into adulthood effectively, it is because they are deficient in one of the following three areas, listed here in order of importance:
First and most importantly is mental health. Crazy people usually don't grasp just how crazy they actually are. If you think you might be even slightly nuts, you need to go seek professional help immediately. Proceeding with a broken mind is guaranteed misery and failure in life. I had a friend with borderline personality seek help and literally be cured after less than a dozen counseling sessions with a good therapist. I had another friend with schizophrenia who had to take his meds every day or the walls would start yelling at him, but otherwise was a model employee. I had another friend who needed help for depression, didn't get it, and once every few months would physically threaten other employees, so that in spite of otherwise being an ideal employee, he couldn't hold a job for a year at a time. If you have had a hard time getting into school or holding down a part time job, there's a very good chance you need to see a shrink.
Second is physical health. There is no success in life that will compensate for being addicted to alcohol, tobacco, or other substances. Mental illness can lead to becoming addicted far more easily than others. Nearly everyone needs to be in the habit of regular physical exercise and a reasonably healthy diet, but mental illness can make it difficult to commit to any such habits long term. Meanwhile studies have shown that having a clean healthy lifestyle will help you tremendously in school, and is otherwise very good for your brain's health.
Once you have your mental health and physical health in order, you are ready for school. As hard as college might be, it's not as hard as trying to support yourself with the type of work you are likely to do without a college degree. In today's world you are likely to have several career changes, and the right education can help you be taken seriously and be a significant contribution to each new place of employment. To this end, it is important that your formal education have 3 qualities: A) It should be something you enjoy or are very interested in - something you would be into even if your college was destroyed in a tornado over the weekend. B) It should be relatively easy for you compared to other subjects - this is a good indicator that you bring talent to this area of expertise. Also A + B makes it much more likely you will stay in school and graduate. C) It should be affordable. The two factors to consider with affordability is first it's employability: how likely is the degree to quickly pay for itself after you graduate? A nursing degree for example is likely to land you a job at $30 per hour with no experience - those kind of wages will pay off a sizable student loan quickly. Secondly consider simply the price of tuition itself, go to the least expensive school that will still give you the education you are looking for. Expensive education is over rated, and the weight of debt on your happiness is under rated.
In summary the foundation for success in life is to first get into reasonably good mental and physical health, and then get an affordable education in something you are interested in and good at.
While studying Human Services at Western Washington University, I did an internship through Americorps with the Education program at the King County Jail on 5th Ave. in downtown Seattle. I got a taste at how effective our criminal justice system is at rehabilitating our criminals, and how good of a financial investment it is for our society.
Let's say you are a prosecuting attorney and need to get your conviction rates up. Stall a few cases who's defendants are too poor to post bail for a few months, while their careers and family life fall apart on the outside. Now offer them a plea bargain: plead guilty and all you have to do is "time served" (the few months they already served.) Because responsible people have people they need to take care of outside of jail, a lot of innocent and good people get criminal convictions on their records because of these kind of nasty tricks.
A full one percent of the USA's population is incarcerated. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world - worse than any dictatorship or socialist dystopia on the planet. Besides the large number of innocent people in jail, jail must also be considered a social service - what other way is better to keep someone from committing domestic violence, for example? I have actually met people who like it in jail, and like to live there at the tax payer's expense. I have heard of homeless people intentionally getting into jail so they could get out of the cold and see a doctor. As good of a resource jail is for these people, we simply cannot afford to provide this kind of high-end social service for some 1% of the population.
I have an alternative I started writing about while studying Human Services, called "Mandatory Treatment." If you catch someone with cocaine on them, don't offer them 3 hots and a cot for a few years, instead make them go into a 3 month in-patient drug rehabilitation program. First, it is going to be LESS pleasant than a longer term in jail, it is a harsher punishment. Second, unlike jail, it might really get them thinking about their life and their mistakes - they might actually change their behavior. Third, it will be much less expensive.
But Mandatory Treatment can work with non-narcotics programs. Driving while under the influence for example - long jail sentences hardly suffice for treating alchohol-related behavior problems, while Mandatory Treatment would have much better odds. Another example is domestic violence: jail is not going to give an abuser sufficient counseling and introspection to change behavior. From vandalism to shoplifting, Mandatory Treatment would work far better than what we have now, for a lot less money.
One way you can instantly add a lot of nutrition to your diet is to convert from any white rice to any whole grain rice, collectively called "brown rice". There are many types of brown rice, and a the commonly found ones I have ran into in Seattle include: black cargo rice, red cargo rice, brown short grain rice (sometimes found in sushi), brown long grain rice. Your normal approach to cooking rice is likely to end up making nearly inedible garbage, but many people have found innovative ways of cooking it that make it just as good if not considerably tastier than white rice.
I have a universal way of cooking all types of brown rice that is easy and works every time:
Put your dry rice out of the package into a pot.
Put water in the pot until the rice is covered by at least 5 times as much volume as the rice itself takes up. So if the rice fills the pot to 10%, make sure the water level is up to at least 60% of the pot.
Bring the rice to a boil stirring occasionally. Cover the pot, and reduce to a simmer.
After 30 minutes, check rice for consistency. If it's ready, move on to step 5, if it is not, repeat this step every 5 minutes until the rice has the texture you want.
Use a pasta strainer to drain the water off of the rice.
Very briefly douse the rice in the strainer with water, and let the rice sit a few minutes in the strainer to let the water drain off the rice.
The rice is now ready to eat or use in some other recipe (fried rice, Spanish rice, etc.)
In a nutshell, to cook perfect brown rice, cook it like you would pasta: boil it until it has the consistency you want, then briefly rinse it off and drain off all the excess water. It's even easier than it sounds.
On my side bar of this blog you will now see the "Diversity of Whiteness" essay, which I originally wrote in 2008, and is based on theories I started developing in 2005 about how the "white privilege" concept may be doing more harm than good in overcoming racism.
This essay has been through several revisions, the main obstacle being my own whiteness making it very difficult for me to use real life examples without coming across as very racist myself. If this sounds wrong to you, I assure you that it IS wrong, and that is one of the main points of this essay.
On the street I am accused of being racist simply because I am white. My response these days is "hey, you are one of those people that spells 'racist' with a silent 'w.' W-H-I-T-E, am I right?"
A relative of mine is interested in parkour, and asked me to help him get started in learning dive rolls. I immediately noticed a stylistic difference between the way I learned to do this in Aikido, and the way the parkour guys on youtube were doing it. Here's how I learned to do it:
Notice the roller's head stays straight forward, chin tucked in. If his head is closer to one arm than the other, it is closer to his lead arm.
In BJJ we have done some shoulder rolls that conflicted with that, where the head is actually intentionally turned way from the lead shoulder/arm (chin still tucked into the chest):
So I didn't quite know how to proceed. The parkour guys call their shoulder roll a "break fall", as in it IS their fall, and they like it BJJ style:
So I got out in the yard and started doing some high impact should rolls parkour style, and they feel a LOT softer than how I first learned to do it in Aikido.
Parkour rolling is now my preferred shoulder roll method.
