Exactly. I spent a decade plus in a job where emails came in routinely until 9-10 at night and often the CEO would send out something on the weekend. Even if I wasn't required to respond or the response was short, this is _absolutely_ work. Over and above that, spending a decade being literally unable to get away from work in that way is like arsenic poisoning. It was like "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm dead." It's insidious and terrible.
Oh goodness. Thank you for introducing me to Shadow Wolves. It sounds positively dreadful. I want to read it but I don't want to pay for it. Either monetarily or cognitively.
You really really don't though. It's not one of those 'so bad it's good' kind of things where there is some novelty to be had. It's boring. It's written with a 4th grade vocabulary. There's no character development outside shallow tropes. Random right wing conspiracies are mixed in without any grounding in the story. The main character is a cartoon of cartoon of a human in a cartoon world with cartoon side kicks. It's awful in every way a book can be awful. And to top it all off it will literally curse your brain.
Haha. Fair. I've got this morbid curiosity about right wing authoritarian conspiracy fiction. Apparently Ben Shapiro has several novels in the same vein. Genuinely curious... why'd you read it in the first place? Are you part of the worst book club in history or something?
A friend gave it to me for Christmas as a gag gift, and as part of the joke escalation cycle I decided I would read it so I could bring it up sometime later. Bad idea :(
I earned a black belt in Karate last year, have messed around with TKD, Judo, and Kali, and this year got reasonably serious about BJJ by starting in a belted program.
It's impossible to overestimate the role MMA/UFC has had on martial arts in the past 20 years. The internet has allowed that knowledge to spread far and wide, but UFC #1 dramatically changed the face of martial arts forever. Before that, you could argue about which one was the "best". After UFC #1, it was pretty clear how dominant Gracie jiu-jitsu was if you wanted to win a fight.
All the traditional martial arts have a place. Simply analyzing the phrase "martial art" should give you some indication of its intent: discipline and beauty. Most traditional martial arts schools are on the decline and, for those that aren't, the caliber of student they get is nowhere near as high as it was 25 years ago. Point sparring tournaments are a shell of their former selves.
MMA and, to a lesser extent, BJJ are more a fighting system than a martial art. There's no bowing, there's little formality, there aren't any forms, and it's ruthlessly focused on the practical.
Toward that end, if you want to learn how to fight, study american boxing for punching, muay thai to lean to kick, and BJJ to learn how to grapple.
If you want a "martial art", then you're probably looking for something more traditional. You can learn decent self defense in them, but there's a lot of non-practical stuff you learn as part of the package.
Is Gracie jiu-jitsu really best for winning a fight, or just for the controlled environments in MMA-style competitions? I frequently hear Krav Maga cited as the most effective for real world fighting. Grappling with parties unknown seems dangerous.
The thing about Krav Maga, Kung fu, or similar stuff that uses "deadly techniques", is that their efficacy is (conveniently?) unprovable. Meanwhile, submission grappling (such as jiu jitsu) and striking techniques (such as boxing & muay thai) are tested constantly from the lowest levels of beginners via sparring, to the highest levels of champions via competition.
Another thing to consider, is take a look at the all-around grappling skills of a top wrestler, judoka, bjj practitioner, etc. Do we really believe that their all-around skills wouldn't enable them to effectively use forbidden techniques such as ball punches or eye gouges or whatever? A skilled grappler is going to win a grappling contest, and a skilled striker will win a striking contest, regardless of the finishing techniques they employ.
It's a really interesting question. Jiu-jitsu unquestionably works in "uncontrolled" environments. I'd wager large money that if more police officers trained in grappling and submission techniques there'd be far fewer shootings.
I don't have specific experience with Krav per se, but the self-defense I learned getting my Karate BB was kravesque. Krav is fine, but I think of it a little like crossfit; it's mostly a marketing thing. In my estimation, krav can be great for self-defense. But anything where you focus on one or two practical defense moves is great for self-defense. Get good at one or two things and drill it 10,000 times.
Not to derail, but the #1 reason cops reach for their weapons is because they fear a suspect has a weapon. Its a split-second, life-or-death choice. No amount of martial arts training will change that.
I once saw a video of some experienced fighters practising some technique on an instructor who had a training knife they don't know about.
With all the excitement and adrenaline, not only did every single student get 'stabbed' - many of them didn't notice until the exercise was over and the instructor pointed out the 'stab wounds'.
I'm not sure there's any amount of BJJ that would make me confident to grapple a guy who could have a concealed knife.
Check out Sambo, those guys have been doing that for quite some time. You have several "levels" of Sambo. It includes striking, throws and ground-fight. They were really ahead of it's time, and Fedor shows that, he was undefeated in MMA but was not #1 in Russia's Sambo championships :-)
My MMA instructor did some Sambo before he did BJJ, and it's nice to know a little bit of Sambo, the throws are really simple but quite brutal.
I've always believed that spoken languages that are constructed/contrived are doomed to failure (esperanto, klingon, etc). I'm not saying that Korean itself is contrived, but it's fascinating that the alphabet was created like that.
The Cyrillic script[1] and the Armenian alphabet[2] were also devised in similar fashion, and probably many more. It is not unusual for writing systems or alphabets to find widespread usage in this manner.
The Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics is another one. It was developed by a missionary that noticed that when aboriginal where written in latin script the result was often long and awkward.
It's successful because there was no better alternative. Before that you could basically use Chinese characters with similar sounds (horrendously inefficient and distorts meaning of the Chinese characters), or just write in Classical Chinese.
This system gave Korean its own writing system, and a good, simple-to-learn one at that.
The hangul script was also successful because it was a state-sponsored improvement over using the chinese characters for the Korean language. Sometimes it helps to have someone abruptly enforce adoption of a better method.
Not everyone supported it. Although King Sejong, who had it invented in the 1440s, was a big proponent, prominent Korean Confucian scholars opposed it on the basis that it would dilute the sway that Confucian/Chinese culture had on Korea and turn them into barbarians. The real reason was probably that by keeping the writing system so time-consuming to learn, they would be able to control the poor much beter.
By the way, there was an excellent South Korean historical TV drama that aired late last year called Tree With Deep Roots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_With_Deep_Roots) that covered the creation of hangul by Sejong and the opposition of the entrenched nobility to its promulgation (links to 720p video and English subtitles are available if anyone's interested).
In fact, hangul was banned by a subsequent king after peasants (who were previously illiterate because of the years it took to become educated in Chinese characters) made signs in hangul and started protesting outside his palace. It wasn't until the modernizing Gabo Reforms of 1894-96 that vernacular Korean replaced Classical Chinese as the official written language of the state.
And even then, words of Sinitic origin (which makes up 60% of contemporary Korean vocabulary) continued to be written in Chinese characters, with hangul used only for native Korean words, similar to how Japanese is written to this day (although Japanese uses Chinese characters for many words of Japanese origin as well). It wasn't until the early 1990s that big Korean newspapers, such as the Chosun Ilbo, started dropping hanja from the majority of their writing (though it is still used in a few situations).
Interestingly, when the state tried to get Korean to adopt the new writing system in the 15th century, it failed miserably because of various political and ideological issues. Only later did Hangeul actually begin to gain popularity, and this happened organically.
I think this is the difference between a constructed language and a constructed script. There are several examples of scripts being constructed in a short time period by one or a few individuals, that have worked out great. I don't know any constructed languages that have had comparable success.
I can understand calling Esperanto a "failure" since it didn't achieve its goal of becoming a common international auxiliary language, but how has Klingon failed? Its purpose was to be the language for a fictional sci-fi race.
His issue doesn't seem to be with computers _per se_, but rather the interaction of all the junk that comes either on a new Windows system or via the default installation process for new software. Even a well maintained Windows machine accumulates crapware over time. It's just the cross you have to bear if you want to run Windows.
While I disagree fundamentally with the heavy-handed approach Apple has taken with the iPhone, I think part of their motivation is to protect the phone's ecosystem from threats. Imagine a world where we have malware infection rates on cell phones equal to, or greater than, the infection rates on personal computers. It would be ugly indeed.
The reason is that such thing not existed. It had to be written, and it's really standard stuff.
Also, by the way, but I'm unable to download this, and there are no tests for this, as well as it clearly breaks the XHTML/JavaScript convention.
Thus, even if it's easy to write, it's not easy enough to pluginize it, make accessible for other developers, write tests and keep XHTML/JavaScript separation.
I'm not sure what the deal is with all the criticism on here. Yeah, it wasn't all that hard - but that's the point. This is a good test of a basic level of skills one needs these days to be a Web developer (Firebug, parsing HTTP headers, deciphering Javascript, jQuery). And, it was fun.
All the hate reminds me of the quote: "Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting."
So, if you read HN and you were able to get through step 5, congratulations! You're at least an average Web developer.
I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I've been quietly following you on the net for quite some time. You seem like one of the nicest people I've never met. Can I buy you lunch sometime? :)
