Huh...

Well, that was strange.  I'd just forgotten about this abortive attempt create some structure.  Just got an email regarding this blog a minute or two ago, and thought "Hey, I should post!".

So here it is...will I post more?  No idea.  I do still need to practice writing.

Well, that didn't work out like I'd planned...

The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.

As the title suggests, this was intended to be a daily exercise of my writing hand; working up my composition muscles that had atrophied since college.  And as you can see, if you're one of the handful of people who stumbled across this blog, that good intention went the way of many good intentions.  

In my defense, for a while right after I started this, my workload became so heavy that pretty much any activity was curtailed until things calmed down.  I'm not the most tolerant of my own failures, but even I can't expect myself to work twelve hours, then sit down and write for thirty minutes, then practice guitar for an hour, then maintain my exercises at the gym, and spend some quality time with my family.  Eventually, you're going to have to let some things slide.  

The new year has me in a somewhat better, but still similar tangle.  Work right now is back to something approximating 40 hours a week, but my free time is entangled between all the things I want to do and things I need to do.  At a glance, there is...

Weekly preparation for our D&D game (not too heavy, using a pre-published module, but still not treating it with the seriousness I'd like to)

Preparation of a training module to teach saber in the spring, and familiarizing myself with the various texts in order to do so.

Scanning and reading, practicing, and more importantly understanding, some longsword texts in order to pass that knowledge onto other over the summer.

Writing all that out, so I can hand them out to my students.

Learning the basic elements of photography so I'm not using my digital SLR as a really high-end point-and-shoot.

Getting back in the habit of visiting the gym, and when I'm there, working out as effectively as I can.

Practicing guitar daily, trying to improve that, so in a year, I'm where I want to be (able to at least strum my way through a song without messing up the strum pattern every fourth measure).

Reading...both all the swordfighting and photography texts I need to, but also some fiction...maybe even some history.

...and I want to write.

I think I might have too many hobbies.

There are also all the little exigencies of life that we need to take care of...cleaning, maintaining myself and my home.  All that takes time.  

So I let this slide.  I think I should at least use it as a journal.   Thinking about the projects and what I need to do has at least let me get them straight a bit more in my head.  So there is that.  

Work intervened...

Even the best laid plans must be put aside on occasion.  On days where I work 15 hours, no, I'm not going to write for 30 minutes.  I only worked 11 hours today, so I decided that yes, I will take a few minutes to write.

I probably did write for a half hour yesterday.  I posted several comments on Ricochet and a few on a private Facebook group on various subjects.  I argued my opinion that a willingness to kill is an essential part of heroism, and that the perfection of Superman demands he be willing to kill if the need is strong enough.

...Batman is, as we all know, a moral cripple. Thus him having being unable to take a life, even when not doing so means the the deaths of hundreds or thousands, makes sense. He's not a hero. He's a man working out his vengeance fantasies each night in lieu of therapy.

But Superman IS a hero. He's the best of us. So there has to be a line where Superman will kill. Because an unwillingness to make hard choices is about the most unheroic things one can possibly be. Comic book writers get away with having heroes who don't kill because they tend to write fairy tales where there is "always" another way. But we know that's not true. Having a lot of power at his disposal, there are very few situations where Superman would need to kill, and his unwillingness to do so when it's not absolutely necessary is part of what makes him a hero. But the unwillingness to forego the hard decision and let others deal with the consequences is ALSO what makes him a hero. 

One could argue that Man of Steel failed to accurately depict a situation where Superman would need to take a life, and I think I'd agree. But for Superman to be a truly moral figure, he needs the capacity to kill.

And I argued a bunch about libertarianism.  I'm not a doctrinaire libertarian.  I like our system of government as is mostly, but I believe that we have dangerously limited freedom in this country, and I'd like to see the state, especially the bureaucratic state, pared back.  So I like libertarianism, and I tend to get my back up when people who ought to be fellow travelers on the road away from serfdom nitpick it for not being the perfect be-all, end-all political solution for everything.  On the subject of drug legalization, I said that the libertarian case is weakest when it comes to heroin, for the obvious reason that its addictive nature distorts incentive, and it is damned dangerous.  When Lemmy tells you "don't do heroin", you listen.  But at the same time, a lot of prohibitionists act like, by winning the argument on heroin, they've won the argument on everything.  And it's not too long before what you're allowed to do is what they think is okay for you to do.

Personally, I'd rather err on the side of leaving people alone, even if that means they make bad decisions.  We don't even know they are bad decisions.  We certainly don't have as many facts about their lives at our disposal as they do.  And some guy a thousand miles away has even less.  As a former sufferer of depression, it's entirely possible I'm alive thanks to cigarettes.  The twenty years I smoked may take ten years off my life at some point, but their anti depressant effect may very well have saved my life already.  But the tobacco prohibitionists would have taken my cigarettes away "for my own good", and who knows, I might be dead now.

In response to some post or other about the rise of "social justice", I lamented my fear that despite for instance the backlash of #Gamergate and #Shirtstorm, we were going to lose in the long run.  Yes, the politically correct will overreach.  Yes, society will reach an equilibrium point where everyone sort of knows what the rules are.  But whatever those rules are, they'll be more constrained than they were before.  The tide of social justice isn't going to recede to the point that someone can write an old fashioned book with red blooded heroes and manly men and womanly women and expect to win an award.  It's not going to recede to the point where trigger warnings won't reside alongside content warnings for and discussion above a third grade level.  It's not going to recede to the point where someone can voice their opinion on a controversial political stance without fearing for their livelihood.  We're going to live in a more sterile, stultifying, more Victorian world,  And just like the rampant prostitution of the Victorian world, we'll have our seedy underbelly, where we gush forth our true opinions behind the anonymous walls of internet handles.  It will be the only place where we'll find honesty.

And you can bet, the other side will still pretend they're victims.

Interstellar

My wife and I went to see this yesterday and I must say I'm glad we did.  I can't remember the last movie I saw that was this good.  I can't even remember the last film I saw that even tried to be good.  I guess this is partially my fault.  It's not entirely that Hollywood has stopped trying to make good films.  It's that you won't find that kind of quality in summer blockbusters.  I've heard good things about Life of Pi, for instance, and Hugo, and whatever else, but I didn't want to see them.

Interstellar, on the other hand, I did want to see.  I knew almost nothing about it, and what I thought I knew was mostly wrong.  For the past several weeks, the Physics pages of Facebook had been filled with discussions of it, mostly of one of the story's central elements, the gigantic black hole called Gargantua, that the planets of Interstellar orbit.   I gathered the gist of the setup was "man has destroyed his environment, and needs to find new worlds".  Since that is the plot of dozens of science fiction stories, as well as a large chunk of our political argument today, and isn't that plausible in either case, I was going to skip it, since I've made a solemn promise to myself to waste no more time on anti-human, anti-science, Luddite screeds masquerading as science fiction.  But the rest of the movie sounded so intriguing (a black hole! whee!) that I changed my mind.  I figured I could control my eye rolling long enough to get to the good stuff.  I had hopes that the beginning was going to just be that nod of the head to Hollywood sensibilities that you need to get a film made (Hollywood liberal pieties work much the same way as Chinese political censors it seems to me)-spend five minutes spouting some cliche about "environmentalism", or "diversity" and then you can get to the bang up, shoot em up you intended to make.

I was wrong.  In some ways, the beginning of the film is the best part.  At this point, if you haven't seen the film, stop reading.  Go see this movie.  It's considerably more literate than I am. The central conflict, the one that creates the moral stakes necessary to send human beings through a not particularly well tested wormhole to another galaxy, has nothing to do with handwringing about humanity's lack of love for Mother Earth.  The cause of the central disaster, a nitrogen breathing microorganism destroying food crops all over the world, isn't atrributed to any particular agency.  It's just a problem that must be dealt with.  And, in a brilliant bit of political subversity, it's one that we aren't dealing with.   We're presented with something that looks kind of like our America, specifically that small town, central Illinois/Iowa/Indiana section of America often referred to as "the Heartland", and we soon find out, that's all there is.   A school determines that a young man won't be allowed to go to college because "we don't need engineers, we need farmers" (lines later in the film indicate that the character does go to college, for agriculture, later, for anyone who was worried that farming got insulted there).  And then there is the line about "approved textbooks" which tell the proper story about "how the moon landing was faked".  As anyone who has heard the arguments over curricula, or the lower and lower standards of approved government standards, or seen the way "sustainability" and other nebulous political terms are prejudiced over advancement or excellence, can't help but find this funhouse mirror America eerily prophetic.

From there, we learn that some people haven't given up trying to solve the crisis, specifically by providing a way to find another planet to live on.   There's also a possibility that aliens are somehow trying to help us reach the stars otherwise out of our reach.  And we're off to the races, or to another galaxy.  But the action also continues on Earth, (over a greater span of time, thanks to relativity).

All in all, it was eminently satisfying.  It very consciously evokes 2001-I get the feeling that the makers knew it would invite comparisons anyway, so they threw in some nods to make it explicit.  Spiritually, it feels like a sister film.  It's more to my taste, since this work is considerably more pro-human than 2001.  It is, in the way that all the best science fiction is, optimistic.   It is also, in the way that all the best science fiction is, about the human condition.  It is what Star Trek occasionally managed to be.  And lastly, it reads like a story written by Arthur C. Clarke, if Clarke had Robert Heinlein's values.

4 stars, highly recommended.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow...

Naturally, the day after I proudly drag myself into writing for thirty minutes despite my strong urging for bed and slumber, I put off writing again until I'm barely coherent and wind up not writing at all.  This is why I need the exercise.  I'm also learning something about myself.  I am, against my inclinations, finding myself more creative in early morning.  I've always preferred to stay up late and sleep late (though I haven't been able to do it satisfactorily for at least a decade), but when I look back at my ability to start myself and do something, I find it's a lot easier to do it at 6 am than 9 pm.  And the final product is better too.  So perhaps I should just reconcile myself with being an early riser.

I did have a topic yesterday: the Eldritch Knight.  I told you this blog was going to include gaming material.  Ever since 5th Edition of D&D has come out, this subclass has fascinated me, so I thought I would try my hand at putting together a guide for it.

I also need to add more material for the Hutton saber guide, but with winter come early, the urgency for that has lessened.  Since we do our training at the park, we need at least moderate weather.  Alas, two inches of snow isn't conducive to swordplay.

Almost didn't do it.

I almost gave today a miss.  It would have been easy; I'm tired; what's one day?  I'll make it up tomorrow.  I am tired.  For the past week, I've been waking up at 5 and going to bed early in the evening, close to 9.  That seems crazy to someone used to staying awake most nights until 11 or 12.  But I'm hoping aligning myself more with the sun will help with seasonal depression this year.  And I like having that time in the morning to myself, while the rest of the family sleeps.  Unfortunately the four year old seems to want to be on the same schedule as me.  So that sweet hour of solitude is more like fifteen minutes of nervous alone time.  And these are the joys of fatherhood.

I would trade it.  Fatherhood is joyful.  You can't really appreciate the development of another human being until you see it, up close, on a day to day basis; seeing the sudden light in their eyes as a task that heretofore was beyond their grasp suddenly comes easily; watching them discover the world and struggle to describe, to narrate their experiences into a coherent whole.  It's really amazing.

One of my Facebook friends posted an image macro about no one can know the root causes of someone's antisocial behavior--that outside influences are a thing, yo!  (Am I the only person getting tired of internet lingo like "such and such are a thing now"?).   I didn't care much for it.  Yes, outside influences are a thing, but they are not an excuse.  No one is responsible for your behavior but you.  Just because someone cut you off in traffic does not excuse you being rude to your wife when you get home.  A life of poverty may be sad, but it still does not justify theft.

On that note, you ever noticed that someone who is trying to "fight the system" or "get back at society" usually winds up not harming society, but individuals?  That's because "society" doesn't exist-not in a manifest way.  Individuals do.

By the same token, you ever heard some activist proclaim we need this or that social program to help alleviate the "failures of capitalism"?  It seems to have escaped their notice that the natural state of man isn't abundance.  It's poverty.  Not just any sort of poverty, but dirty,disease ridden, desperate poverty without recourse.  That many of us do not live in just abject circumstances is the success of capitalism.  That the distance between individuals from that life of misery is somewhat closer for some than others is an irrelevancy.

I'm pretty sure this upcoming "net neutrality" legislation is just going to get the government more involved with our lives.  Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem.  Companies could potentially do something that we think might be bad, even though they haven't yet done this thing and haven't shown any inclination to do so, so we need government to intervene preemptively to stop this notional harm that internet companies might cause, someday, if they get around to it.  Instead we'll have the government causing ten times more harm right now.

And lastly, the internet decided to go into an uproar because the chief scientist of the Rosetta mission to land a probe on a comet wore a shirt that hurt somebody in their nono place.  Advance the cause of humanity by landing a space probe on a thimble of rock hundreds of thousands of miles away?  Less important than the social statement ones sartorial choices make.

There it is, my first political post.  It probably won't be my last.  Hopefully in future they'll be more than just notes on the passing scene.  Since it appears I've had at least a couple people hit my blog other than myself, my apologies for the rather stream of consciousness manner of this particular post.  I'll try to be more coherent in future.  Thanks for stopping by.

Hutton Saber

Posting the beginning of my syllabus.   I think this should count:

Hutton Saber

Alfred Hutton (1839-1910) was an English soldier, antiquarian, writer, and swordsman.  He, along with friends Sir Richard Burton and Eggerton Castle, are credited with the 19th Century revival of historical fencing.

In 1890, dissatisfied with the current military saber practice, he published Cold Steel, a lesson planned based on 18th Century backsword, combined with then modern Italian style.  In addition to the saber, it was adapted for use with the single stick, sword-bayonet, and truncheon.

While being based on earlier English swordsmanship, it uses French fencing terminology. 

Weapons:

The Hutton saber was a light saber, with a mild curve and bell guard.  For practice, the intended blade is a little more than a half inch wide, and approx 31-34 inches long.

It's not necessary to have a saber to practice Hutton Saber.  All moves can be done with a wooden stick approx 3 feet long, and 3/4 inches thick.  The book even recommends this practice over the saber itself.

(Note: all instruction below is written assuming both student and opponent are right handed)

First Position:  Stand straight, feet and legs together, right foot facing forward and left foot at 90 degrees.  Hold sword down along leg, in front with knuckles toward leg.  From this position one salutes, then goes en garde.

En Garde  Stance:

The stance for saber is a fairly standard fencing stance: Feet approximately shoulder width apart, right foot facing towards opponent, back foot facing perpendicular, knees bent, back straight, head facing towards opponent.  The left hand should rest on hip so that left arm is crooked.  Right arm will hold blade in a beginning guard, usually either tierce  or middle  guard.

Weight should rest equally on front and back foot.

Movement:

The primary fencing step used is the gathering step.  To advance, lead off with the front food, and once planted, go back to guard by bringing the back foot forward.  To retreat, do the reverse; step backwards with the rear foot and once planted, follow with the front foot. 

At all times, keep balance.  Shoulders and back should remain straight.  All movement should be from hips down, to the greatest extent possible.

Other types of movement: the crossover (the Passing step in Longsword terminology), the balustra, et cetera, are used in saber, and we will cover those in future. 

For now, we will be training with lateral movement and using the gathering step. 

The Lunge:

A proper lunge should consist of

1.  Extend arm.

2. Lunge-by lifting right foot and bringing it forward.  Front leg should bend no more than 90 degrees.  Back leg should remain straight and back foot should remain planted.  Don't zombie foot! (zombie footing is rolling the back foot so that it drags behind.)

At all times the body should remain upright and not lean forward. 

3.  Recover-push off with front leg to recover back to an en garde position.  Arm should remain extended.

4.  Back to guard-bring arm back into a guard position.

This lunge can be applied to smallsword, foil, epee, and saber.  For rapier, one should use the same basic structure, but lunge more shallowly.  For saber, the attack combined with the lunge may be a cut or a thrust.  For the other weapons-thrust only.

The Guards:

Hutton Saber guards are similar to guards in other fencing forms, though it differentiates based on height, and includes a few unique to it.  The primary guards for defense are:

Note: 2 terms to remember with guards pronated and supinated.  Pronated means knuckles up and supinated means knuckles down.

Tierce: A right guard, with hands at approx. waist height, pronated, with sword pointing towards opponents head, edge out and down.

Quarte: A left guard, with hands supinated at waist height across body, with sword pointing towards opponents head.

Prime: A left guard, with arm across body, with blade pointed toward ground, and knuckles pronated.

Seconde:  A right guard, knuckles pronated  and blade pointed toward ground

Middle or Neutral Guard:  blade held midway between a tierce and a quarte, sword point toward opponents head, and edge toward ground.

Hanging Guard:  A high prime.