Category: Side Notes

Coding Anarchy

As you may have noticed I’m an anarchist (if you haven’t noticed now you know). I also enjoy giving my friends free publicity. To this end I’m going to plug one of my friend’s new anarchist blog titled Coding Anarchy.

In the spectrum of anarchism he falls flatly on the anarcho-capitalist side; or the not-a-real-anarchist side for those of you anarchists who really don’t like the capitalist flavor of anarchism*. If that offends you in any way then feel free not to click on the link. For those not so easily offended you can expect posts related to economics and other geeky pursuits.

*Please send all hate me regarding me referring to anarcho-capitalism as a form of anarchism to i_dont_give_a_fuck@christopherburg.com**.

**This is not a real e-mail address.

Repairing Broken Equipment Sucks

Nothing new for you today. I did managed to get my ancient desktop running again after pulling out several bad memory modules and tossing in a different power supply. Most of my server infrastructure is fully operational again. Not having an operational e-mail server does suck pretty heavily if you’re wondering.

Oh well, it could have been worse. At least I’ve been having decent luck with my electronic necromancy.

I’m Back

You may have noticed that the website was down most of yesterday afternoon and evening. There was a major power outage at my dwelling last night. Around 2:30 this morning the power was restored and when I went to restart my servers only to find that my server wasn’t turning on (well it was turning on but it wasn’t passing POST). After a lot of mucking about, which primarily included salvaging parts from an old computer to replace the destroyed parts in my server, I was finally able to get my e-mail server online. The web server that runs this site had to do some work on repairing the file system so it wasn’t online until recently.

The downside of running your own server is that you’re responsible for restoring your shit. Needless to say I didn’t get anything written as far as posts and since I’m still repairing equipment that went belly up in an apparent power surge I won’t be getting anything up later today either.

Competitive Sports Can Teach Valuable Self-Defense Skills

I’ve decided to take up judo as both a form of exercise and a self-defense tool. After reviewing numerous martial arts I settled on judo for two primary reasons: it’s an art that focuses on throwing and can be practiced against a fully resisting opponent. The reason I’m interested in a throwing art is because throwing opens an opportunity for running and running is what I really want to do in a self-defense situation. But the second reason is more important in my opinion.

When it comes to self-defense arts there are two schools of thought. The first school, which includes arts such as aikido and most forms of karate, teach self-defense moves by having individuals practice against fully cooperative opponents. The second school, which includes arts such as judo and Brazilian jujutsu, teach self-defense moves by having individuals practice them against fully resisting opponents. Often the second school is criticized for being sport focused, which is a criticism often made against various shooting sports such as United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA). Critics often claim that the skills learned in these sports don’t transfer over to self-defense. In the case of martial arts that practice against fully resisting opponents critics claim that the moves, being safe enough to practice on a fully resisting opponent, are ineffective in a real fight. The criticisms against USPSA usually revolve around the “bad gamer habits” that one develops when shooting competitively.

One of the first things I heard when I decided to start USPSA was that the habits it caused me to develop would get me killed. But these claims are, in my not so humble opinion, malarkey. USPSA teaches you several important skills including operating a firearm under stress, shooting while moving, and the ability to engage hostile targets efficiently while avoiding friendly targets. All three of those things and many of the other skills one picks up by participating in a combat handgun sport are transferable to an actual self-defense situation.

Martial arts that allowed one to practice against fully resisting opponents share similar criticisms. Critics often claim that the “bad habits” learned in a sport such as judo will get one killed in a real fight. One of the toughest problems with self-defense situations is having to deal with one or more human beings. Humans, being creatures capable of thinking, aren’t restricted to acting in predictable ways. Prearranged scenarios involving cooperating opponents are not going to prepare you to deal with uncooperative attackers. While arts that allow fully resisting opponents may not have a repertoire of especially lethal moves (although throwing a guy against a concrete sidewalk can be extremely painful and potentially lethal) they will ensure you have actually practiced the moves you know against opponents who were trying put you on the ground.

There is no way to fully simulate a self-defense situation. Critics of USPSA often cite force-on-force training as the ultimate method of realistic self-defense training. While force-on-force training certainly offers different elements than USPSA it’s still the same as an actual self-defense encounter. After all, the chances of you getting seriously injured or killed in force-on-force training is practically zero. Likewise, martial arts that rely on cooperative opponents can teach you far more dangerous techniques than arts that rely on resistive opponents. But when the time comes to actually utilize one of those moves you may find yourself screwed since you’ve only practiced it on a cooperative opponent and a resisting opponent is unlikely to offer you the window needed to perform the move.

Let’s cease this constant sport versus self-defense debate (I know my plea is falling on deaf ears but I’m going to make it regardless). Combat sports can teach you many valuable skills when it comes to self-defense. While the sporting nature of those combat sports may lead one to develop skills that aren’t effective in a self-defense situation you must be able to overcome numerous ineffective responses when entering a self-defense situation anyways. At least you will have a solid foundation of effective skills to work with though.

Sometimes It’s Just Not Worth It

So there’s another trial in Florida revolving around a situation that ended up with an African American teenager being shot by a white male. The shooter is claiming self-defense and the prosecutor is claiming murder. After the fiasco that was the Zimmerman trial I’m not even going to make an attempt to guess whether or not the defendant is innocent. But I will take a moment to discuss potentially confrontational situations:

On the evening of 23 November 2012, Mr Dunn and his fiancee parked at the petrol station in Jacksonville, Florida, after attending his son’s wedding. His fiancee went inside to buy wine and crisps.

Davis and three other teenage boys, all African American, had stopped at the same place after visiting a shopping mall.

On Tuesday, Mr Dunn, a software developer, testified that the music blasting from the boys’ sport utility vehicle, next to his, was so loud it hurt his ears. He said he asked them cordially to turn it down, and they did.

But Davis, sitting in the rear passenger-side seat, apparently ordered his friend in the front seat to turn the music back up. Then, Mr Dunn testified, he became verbally abusive toward Mr Dunn, called him a “cracker”, a derogatory word for a white person, and then threatened his life.

Here’s the million dollar question: was it worth engaging with the teenagers in the first place? Obviously we have the benefit of 20/20 hindsight to say it wasn’t. But let’s put ourselves into the shoes of Mr. Dunn for a second. Were you in his position would you have asked the teenagers to turn their music down? I wouldn’t have. Why? Because it simply wouldn’t have been worth it. Mr. Dunn was only at the gas station temporarily, which means the discomfort of the loud music would only last a minute or two. That right there makes the effort of asking the person to turn down their music greater than the reward for me.

I’m not saying Mr. Dunn was in the wrong by asking the teenagers to turn their music down. What I am saying is that most of the time when faced with a short-term inconvenience inflicted on us by another it’s better to just suffer it. Especially when you consider how hotheaded people in this country can be. Something as simple as asking an individual to turn down their music can seen as a challenge and the response is often going to be a confrontation (not necessarily a violent one but a confrontation nonetheless).

The first step on should take in any self-defense situation is avoidance. This is something everybody should keep in the back of their head.

Bitching About Stupid Shit

The amount of absolutely stupid shit people find to bitch about continues to surprise me. Today’s example of a totally irrelevant occurrence rustling jimmies is Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl commercial. Although I didn’t see it I do know that it involved the song America the Beautiful being sung in languages other than English. How do I know this? Because quite a few people are very upset about it:

The response to the Cheerios commercial Sunday night, however, was all positive — the bigoted social media backlash instead appeared a few minutes later when Coca Cola aired its commercial with “America the Beautiful” sung in different languages.

The calls for boycotts came immediately with tweets like this one from @HappieDays12: “I will not be purchasing any #CocaCola products for the foreseeable future. Pretty sure we speak English in America.”

Similarly minded @Lady_Jay_J tweeted, “Since when did the national anthem get sung in Spanish?! Not a good idea #CocaCola.”

Even today there are people tweeting about this commercial. I’m left wondering why anybody cares. Of all the problems that exist in the world why does anybody waste the time necessary to be upset about the language a song is sung in? Is it because America the Beautiful is the national anthem of the area inside of some imaginary borders referred to as the United States and that most English speakers inside of those lines believe English is the official language? If that’s the reason these people are upset let me help them overcome their pointless complaint. The official language of this area known as the United States is whatever the fuck you want to speak. Nationally, which is the scope we’re working on as the song is the national anthem, there is no official language in the United States.

Now that I have resolved this crisis feel free to find another pointless thing to complain about. I suggest getting upset at the people who don’t know the difference between there, their, and they’re. If you’re going to get upset about something involving the English language then it might as well be something that’s relevance to the language.

The State of the Union

Yesterday some dude donned a suit, stood in a marble building, and gave a speech. Judging from both my Facebook and Twitter feeds he said some things that really irked Republicans off and made Democrats feel giddy. I didn’t watch it. During the time the speech was going on I managed to finish a kettle bell workout, practice some martial arts, and read a few chapters from Sprint Wind: The Story of the Japanese Martial Arts.

Between the workout, practice, and reading I felt pretty fantastic after the speech. My friends who sunk their time into watching the speech didn’t feel so great afterward (except from my Democrat friends). Once again foregoing politics for self-improvement paid off. I think I will continue my anti-politics policy and reap the health benefits it offers.