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Tonya writes: now dern it, vox, you’re not keeping up with the comments. yesterday in one of the comment threads several people (myself included) were clamoring for your expertise on which types of martial arts to look into. and what do we get? total freakin’ silence!

Sorry, I’ve just been under the weather for about ten days now with a viral bug and the very thought of exercise – which the doctor is forbidding – is tremendously frustrating to me. First, don’t worry about the spiritual aspects, since there are almost none in the vast majority of American schools. I recommend very different sorts of schools for those under 13 and those who are older, however

Younger kids will do fine in the traditional belt factory, as all they’re learning is the techniques and any decent Tae Kwon Do school will do. Just visit it and be sure that the top instructors actually do the teaching, that the students are respectful and the purple and red belts appear to know their stuff. Children can learn the basics, but even a kid with a black belt is still just a kid with a black belt, not a fighter.

Adults and teenagers need to go to a fighting-oriented school. How do you know you’re at one? 1) Everyone, from white to black, is sparring. 2) They are actually making contact to the head. 3) At least one spectator will be there in his robes, watching with a pair of crutches or other visible signs of damage. If the answer to “what night do you spar” is anything but a specific day of the week, it isn’t a fight school. We were particularly harsh, as we sparred Wednesdays and often Saturdays as well. Also, don’t buy into the rubbish about how they teach control and if you can tap someone you can just as easily hit them hard blah blah blah. It isn’t true and I’ve beaten the smack out of enough touch-fighters to prove it. The knowledge that you won’t get hit creates a false situation from the start, and you can’t develop the necessary toughness without getting punched in the face a few times.

Also, ask around. Even the belt factories will know which schools are the serious fight schools. I once had a black belt correctly identify my instructor without my telling him after I hit the guy with a single uppercut. As for style, I’d lean more towards aikido or jujitsu and away from the tae kwon do and tang soo do. The latter tend to be very strong on feet and very weak on hands and grappling. The best, if you can find it, is a school that has masters in a variety of styles, which will provide decent knowledge of locks and throws as well as plenty of time throwing hard style punches and kicks.

I wish I knew more locks and throws, as that’s the area in which my training was weakest. But the main thing is to find a school that fights. There’s no substitute for rounds sparred, and sparred hard. My own training was a blend of Shorin Ryu karate with Wing Chun kung fu, mixed in with Philippino kali. I figure that I probably fought a mimimum of 3,000 two-minute rounds during the time I was actively training.

UPDATE – Shaolin Master Bob points out that belt factories where the belt tests are scheduled are definitely to be avoided. I concur completely. The time it takes to master a skill or a technique is wholly subjective; scheduled tests indicate a total lack of concern for individual development.

She said, and I think reasonably, that she’s sick of men whining about women pushing them around. I totally agree. If a woman tries to shut you down, don’t just take it, shut her down instead. If she wants to play a game, don’t back down, play it to win. As is the case with most negative social developments, there is far more fear out there than is reasonably justified.

As Wendy Shalitt has pointed out, women can never win in a direct verbal confrontation with a man. The only way that they win is when men wave the white flag and run off the field crying that the girls aren’t playing fair. Women don’t like men who act like little girls. And no one, of either sex, respects someone who abandons their position at the first sign of opposition.

PS – I also have to mention that the concept of for whom women are dressing was developed by Space Bunny, not me. She’d be the one NOT wearing the cheerleader outfit.

Okay, these are pretty funny. You’d be able to tell it’s a Packer site even if it wasn’t in the URL, since so many of the insults are directed at the Mighty Vikings. I’m not sure which I liked better, CHOKE KINGS or DOMEQUEENS. The former is more appropriate, but the latter mocks the one thing I hate about the Vikes, namely, the Hump.

I think the two best logos are the Chicago Bear handicapped helmet and the Pontiac Pussies, although I also liked the old Buccaneer with the mouse ears. The best name has to be the Carolina Prancers.

Seeing all of them spread out across the page reminds me of my favorite old NFL bedsheets. I think I still have the pillowcase around somewhere.

Ian McLeod writes about Headcrash: Just finished the book yesterday. My initial reaction (after a long blackout from side-splitting laughter): “Good God, the Original Cyberpunk is a genius!” I immediately ordered copies for my closest friends… After the end of the week, I’ll get the review written and posted.

I told you it was good stuff. From the mouths of immortals…. And the Original Cyberpunk has been experimenting with ebook formats:

Later last night I had a great deal of fun playing around with the Palm Reader footnote and sidebar functionality. The infonuggets in Headcrash *very* readily convert to footnotes and pop up just the way I’d always imagined they would. I now believe that, ten years ago and utterly without knowing, I *created* that book to be a Palm file.

If anyone else said that, you’d take it with a grain of salt. But coming from a Dick-winner like the Original Cyberpunk, it’s entirely credible.

Women judge the attractiveness other women more harshly when at their most fertile, suggests a new study. The phenomenon could be a strategy to devalue potential rivals, says the psychologist behind the work – being bitchy about others could help a woman win the attention of a desirable man.

I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I absolutely hate it when women say nasty things about their imaginary rivals. I don’t feel threatened by the fact that George Clooney or Brad Pitt are handsome – I fully expect that if we were pursuing the same girl, I would lose out. So be it. To paraphrase what someone here once commented, there is no one so hated as a pretty girl with a great body wearing a tight dress in a room full of plain Janes. She’s just as likely to be nice and intelligent as the most mutant-looking wallflower there, but she’ll almost always be dismissed as a walking bag of character flaws before she’s even opened her mouth.

And yet, it’s we men who are then condemned for being superficial. The reality is that everyone is more or less superficial, and superficiality is really the only place to start. The Internet is the only place where a meeting of the minds can possibly precede the superficialities, and yet I don’t see Internet dating being held up as a great advancement for mankind. Usually, it’s dismissed as the last resort of losers, from what little I’ve read about it.

The truth is that women are the dominant sex. Our opinions not only don’t drive day-to-day life, they barely factor in. Women don’t dress to please men, with the notable (and much-appreciated) exception of the Pam Andersons of the world, they dress to avoid the criticism of each other. Let’s face it, if it were up to me, every woman’s wardrobe would consist of nothing but slinky black dresses, slinky red dresses, hot pants, bustiers and Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader outfits.

Hey, if we ever do get that one-world government, I think I just discovered my campaign platform for World President.

This is just insane. The notion that you can’t kick someone out of the house you own violates hundreds of years of common law, not to mention the very notion of private property. I disagree with the article’s conclusion, though. If someone can’t get it together enough to find a place to live, they’re hardly going to support an expensive lawsuit because you put all their stuff in the yard and changed the locks. This law would never stand up in court, if anyone bothered to challenge it.

Ridiculous.

ESPN has a column by some loser chick explaining that Tom Brady is not hot because even though he is really handsome and lots of girls are gaga over him, he is a Republican and doesn’t dance well. Umm… okay, LIKE I GIVE A FLYING RAT’S ASS! Save it for Tiger Beat, Fluffy.

What is ironic, of course, is how quickly attractive, liberal, socially conscious but upwardly mobile women become Republicans as soon as they achieve their ultimate goal and marry a man with money. After one taste of a driveway full of Mercedes and cocktail party glitz, they’re throwing fundraisers for George Delano.

From Sports Illustrated: Allen Iverson didn’t take his removal from Philadelphia’s starting lineup lightly, and he let everyone know how he felt about 76ers interim coach Chris Ford. “I was angry all day from the shootaround on,” Iverson said. “Going in there and having a meeting and being with some guy that I don’t really know, telling me that I wasn’t going to start and what I have to do for us to be successful … Iverson, who missed Monday’s practice and was held out of the starting lineup by Ford, led the 76ers with 27 points and a season-high 14 assists. He entered the game with 4:39 left in the first quarter and played 36 minutes overall.

“The relationship between us goes out the window,” said Iverson, the NBA’s leading scorer. “I told him why I couldn’t make it, and it wasn’t enough.” Iverson said his plane was delayed after he played in the All-Star Game in Los Angeles. “I don’t have to be his friend, I don’t have to speak to him. I can play for him, though. I can play hard for him and I can do exactly what he wants me to do, night in and night out. I definitely will do that. But as far as having a relationship with him outside of basketball, that’s done from Day One.”

Allen Iverson is proof of where never being disciplined gets you. He’s a highly paid grown man, and he’s still a petulant little boy. If he had any maturity at all, he’d know that the coach was sending a message to the rest of the players by sitting his star, who had, however inadvertantly, violated the rules. But instead of taking responsibility, Iverson prefers to whine, pout and stomp his feet publicly. He sounds like a two year old shouting “I’m mad at you!” This is one reason why I hate the NBA. In the NFL, this sort of attitude gets beaten out of the players by their second year – unless they’re Terrell Owens, of course.

Some friends of ours have children who have never really been disciplined. They always marvel that the one child, who has been notoriously out of control even by modern standards, seems to particularly revere and obey me. I’ve never told them the reason is that one day, I told him to go upstairs because his mother was calling him. His reaction was to kick me in the groin.

He was very surprised when I picked him up by the throat, pulled him nose to nose and told him that if he ever kicked me again, I was going to kick him right back. I then informed him that he would treat me and all other adults with respect in the future, or we’d have another talk with his feet dangling two feet off the ground and his face turning purple. Then I put him down and told him to go upstairs because his mother was calling him. He ran right upstairs without a word of complaint.

That was many years ago. We’ve gotten along just fine ever since, and on the very few occasions that I’ve told him to do anything, he all but salutes. He’s not afraid of me, but he doesn’t seem terribly keen on testing boundaries around me either. They learn quick, those puppies.

Martial arts is a fantastic way to help even older teenagers understand authority. My younger brother was a hellion and had progressed to committing minor Federal felonies, so I basically ordered him to study martial arts with us for six months. By the end of that time, he’d completely lost his angst-laden teen bravado – I knew he’d be okay when one day he was assigned to spar with me and I noticed he was shaking. When I asked him if he was cold, he said, no, he was scared.

“Why are you scared?”

“Cause you’re gonna hit me.”

“Yeah, so?”

“And it’s gonna hurt!”

“Yeah, so?”

Once I saw that he realized true strength does not involve posing and showing off in front of your friends, but the determination to get up after you get knocked down, I told him he could quit. I don’t remember him ever showing up there again, but then, he didn’t need it anymore. I also don’t think that it hurt him to see that the baddest black Dragon of them all, our sensei, was a cheerful, happy-go-lucky guy who was always smiling, even when he was beating the absolute merde out of you.

I’m a firm believer in the notion that every male needs to get beaten down at some point in his life, generally somewhere around the age of 13-16. Maybe even sooner if you’ve got a penchant for bullying others. Some of us definitely need it more than others. Actually, I’m starting to think that it would do more than a few females good as well. There’s nothing like a good right hook putting you on your back to remind you that you are not, in fact, the center of the universe or the greatest thing since sliced bread. I don’t advocate uncontrolled violence, but I’ve never seen a faster teacher than Mr. Pain.

Like our sensei used to say: “So, you can’t remember to keep your hands up? Don’t worry, I’ll remind you.”

The St. Paul Pioneer Press wonders: You’ve seen them: Terrorist toddlers screaming at the supermarket. Kamikaze kindergartners with anger issues on the playground. Surly adolescents with no respect for anyone older than 18. And you’ve wondered: Have kids always been this way and I’m just getting crankier? Or are today’s parents spineless saps producing an inordinate number of brats?

This is no mystery. The notion, pushed by one “expert” in the article, that children are over-disciplined today defies belief. There’s no question that there’s a direct link between the distaste for discipline on the part of parents and the lunatic behavior of their children. And when the state leaps in to ensure that parents are afraid to discipline, the problem gets even worse. There is no problem so dire that the state cannot make it worse.

One idiot couple in Minnesota called child protection services to ask if it was child abuse if their neighbor spanked his own children. Note – they weren’t accusing him of child abuse, they just wanted to know. Needless to say, they were both surprised and horrified when, based on this question, the Child Nazis leaped at the opportunity to wreak havoc on a family and had the guy arrested and thrown in jail for two days.

Sure, there are parents who mistreat their children. But when you consider that governments around the world have murdered hundreds of millions of innocent citizens for no reason at all, why would you turn to the state as a solution. In Child Protection, just like everything else in which it intervenes, the state does nothing except make matters worse.

Of course, it won’t be long before refusing to have your child vaccinated will be dubbed child abuse. If you can get thrown in jail for being accused of having spanked your child, I’m sure they’ll be able to justify jailing someone for failing to have their six-month old inoculated against Hepatitis B.