Safe Passage

What was that about "shall not be infringed"? So much for that summer vacation to Alaska for now.

Make your own CCW map.

Thanks to Joe Huffman for the map link.

Are they trying to start a fight?

Yes, they are Tam. And the way they win is to get you to swing first.

This is basic classical strategy, folks. When forced to engage an enemy within a defined boundary (like a national border), every effort must be taken to provoke as many localized incidents as possible so as to prevent formation of an organised and unified opposition. Especially when attacking from a position of (societal) dominance, it is desirable to incite actions in response to which exceeding established societal constraints and limitations can be argued as imposed necessity. The more extreme the enemy (that would be our fellow citizens, you understand) can be portrayed to be, the easier it is to claim the rightness of whatever behavior needs justification. Claiming the moral high ground isn't enough, being acknowledged as being in the ethical and moral right is mandatory for the ultimate legitimacy of any "victorious" claimant.

Do you know why fascism ultimately failed following WW II? Because the Jews held the moral high ground 'till the gasping, fiery end and were acknowledged as having done so. How many of us are prepared to go to such an equivalent extreme in order to "restore the Constitution" or "show that socialist _______ (name of politician of your preference here) what's what"?

Have you - not just you personally, Tam - have we taken a moment to consider just who it is we are most likely to violently confront "come the revolution"? It won't be Judge George Steeh of the Eastern District of Michigan, some bureaucracy, or any politician; no, it's going to be the people specifically employed to "interface" with the public. You know, the cops. With the fire fighters and EMS types very quickly to follow.

Take a look at the riots in the LA area back in 1992. While the fuzz was all forted up during the first 36 - 48 hours of the thing, the FD and EMS were regularly shot at (and even occasionally hit). Persistent denial of authority's intrusion into disputed territory is one of the most commonly chosen tactical errors known. I say error because the simple fact of control of a region being visibly/publicly disputed is sufficient to undermine authority's claims thereon; actively engaging them (especially from within the boundaries of that region) on their own terms thereafter is a recipe for defeat in detail.

Are we really prepared to accept the almost certainly utterly insignificant nature of the incident(s) that will spark off the conflagration? It won't be the next act of further infringement on our rights itself, it will be some cop's trying to "do his duty" afterwards that has Joe and Jane Six-Pack going off. Maybe the FBI "... tagging you like a migrating harp seal every time you want to run to the 7-11 for a bag of chips, and warrant be damned" or just Officer Random Example serving a subpoena. All without any of us going anywhere near a Costco you will note.

Before this goes too much further, might I suggest a close examination of the French Resistance during WW II? Pay attention to who was associated with whom, and by what political ideology and/or class distinction, and then determine how almost everyone eventually "just happened" to come to the Gestapo's peculiar attentions. France is a pretty unified country compared to America, any bets on how long it takes for the debt settling to get good and bloody here? Then add all of those foreign US bond (government debt) holders trying to get some of their own back into the mix.

There's never a "good" time to start fighting and "history" is always much nastier in the doing than in the telling later. Before we do this, maybe take the time to check for alternative options just one more time? We don't want to fall victim of "their" manipulations, do we?

Even if you can put it out in time, there's just not much you can do with a burnt bridge afterwards.

Power Psychology

Reading this blog post (about this study) an assertion caught my eye that has some relevance to Krav Maga, I think:

Which guy appears more powerful? They guy with leaning back in a chair, feet up, hands behind his head? Or the guy hunched forward, hands together in his lap?




Which guy do you think feels more powerful?



The study found that assuming the 2 power positions (vs. non-power) for 1 min each had three results:

1. Subjects rated themselves as more powerful (2.84 vs. 1.87 on a 1 to 4 scale)

2. When offered a choice of keeping $2 versus betting it all on dice, 86% of the power group chose to gamble, vs. 60% of the non-power

3a. Their testosterone went up about 15% or down 10% from baseline, respectively:





3b. Power position also significantly lowered cortisol levels by about 15%, while adopting the low-power position had a limited, but upwards effect. Cortisol is usually secreted during acute stress.






All this, from two minutes of a posture change. True for men and women equally.

...........

III.

This isn't anything new, it's long been known that forcing a physical maneuver can alter mood. Forced smiling can make you happier; clenching the fist makes men more aggressive and women feel less in control; method actors key off of physical movements to get their head in gear. And yoga exists.

(my bold)

There are many women students at my Krav Maga school who are much further advanced in the discipline than I am yet. Even so, I think I see some evidence in support of the contention in bold above. I can't think of a single woman who doesn't strike harder/smoother with the palm than she does with a clenched fist (after taking the differential in wrist strength into account). Since the more advanced levels require traditional boxing gloves (for training partner protection if nothing else), I wonder if this seemingly minor psychological observation ought to be pointed out as a regular part of training?

UPDATE: 2:30 PM, 10/09/10:

I should make clear that I'm talking about the in-class training environment here and not during an actual defense. Then it all comes down to the very simple formula: 1) hit as hard as you can, any way and place that you can; 2) survive to escape your attacker. In training though we ought to consider utilizing whatever techniques we can that offer seeming benefit for the training experience. As my pseudonymous source observed elsewhere in the same post:

It should also be obvious that this shouldn't work. How out of touch with our own bodies must we be if we can unconsciously change our mood by accidentally sitting a certain kind of way?

..........

Some readers will come back with a notion of a mind-body feedback loop, fine, no argument from me; but if these principles are so well known, why don't people do them more often?

Indeed, why don't we? Neutral stance ought to be expressly about attaining this bio-physical response for our own advantage. We don't have to know the precise physiological chemical process that triggers the demonstrated bio-chemical reaction, we only need to recognise it's utility in countering the overwhelming impact the adrenal flood that accompanies any violent encounter can impose on us. I don't think we should count on the influence such a physical display is asserted to have on an observer, but we shouldn't just dismiss it either - the attacker isn't the only observer of an altercation often enough.

This is a bit farther out on the limb of possibility, but I think the whole "method actor" reference made above has potential training utility too. Developing specific mental/physical associations to stimulate increased aggressiveness of response during training (don't just throw that number 4, 6, 1, 7 elbow combination, snap it) will almost certainly carry over when it's dark and noisy and this guy's just not going to stop ....

Needs follow up with somebody who knows much more about the realities involved, but there's something to this, I think.

One final thing; since this is all about training, via this very NSFW site (really, don't click on the link if female nudity offends you) comes awareness of this post that is quite work safe other than the letter arrangement within the URL.

Seems that most everything your high school gym teacher told you is wrong. Well, at least when it comes to all that start-of-the-class stretching.

A recent spate of studies shows that when it comes to warming up before exercising, phys ed instructors didn’t do us any favors by having us to go through a series of calf extensions, hurdler’s stretches and the like.

The latest salvo against stretching comes from a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, which found that static stretching before a workout lowered runners’ endurance and made their body less efficient. While previous studies have illustrated the effects of stretching on anaerobic activities[1], this was the first one to show the effects on runners.

I think that stretching generally, and range-of-motion extension specifically, ought to be an intrinsic part of any Krav Maga training routine. It isn't "warm up", it's a fundamental contribution to our total training effort. Unlike other athletes, Krav Maga trains us for an "event" we can never warm up for; you're physically and mentally relaxed and then it's on, full-tilt-boogy! If you're lucky you might have time to take a basic foot stance, but not for much more than that.

Static stretching's limitation of performance is actually a benefit within the Krav Maga training environment, I think, as it more realistically contributes to simulating the physical stress and fatigue we experience during a violent confrontation. In any case, something further to consider before the next class session.

I'm 1407

Here.

How about you?

I admit to some ambivalence as regards my employer's hoplophobia, but lacking a more courageous (not to mention clear thinking) alternative immediately to hand, I console myself that working to change our culture includes continuing working myself, so ...

It's an imperfect world and I fit in disturbingly well. :)

Go take a stand on where you'll take a seat.

------

Oops, forgot to finger the chapeau: via Instapundit.

What Day Is This?

I know it's Saturday once I hear Alan faintly gasp, "I can't breathe ...".

Weerd Beard cums through for me again.

:)

He Shot Me!

It happened here as part of this event and the gun was an up-scale version of one of these designed* for live fire training.

And truth be told, I was kinda expecting it to happen, but still ...

Re-Direct comes first on the list for a reason!

:)

Re-direct
Control
Attack
Take

* The pistols described here if I'm not mistaken.

When Does The Future Get Here?

On last nights Fast Forward Radio from The Speculist guys, the question arose as to what development(s) qualifies as a hallmark of "the future". My off the cuff response was that the future never arrives; we always live in the now after all. Upon somewhat deeper thought, I do have a technology standard that quantifies my personal vision of "the future".

All of the potential technology we variously anticipate is dependent upon a source of electrical energy. With that universal condition in mind, my metric for arrival at "the future" is a realistically portable source of electrical energy that contains sufficient energy to power my abode and all the other devices I possess (if not all of them at the same time necessarily), other than my transportation, without need for re-fuel for at least 10 years. Think Hyperion Power Module as a model, but not necessarily a nuclear or radioactive decay process being involved. If you're a sci-fi reader, think Heinlein's Shipstone power supply.

So there you have it, I will have lived to see the future when I have the option to purchase personal energy independence on an at-least-decadal cycle.

For Stephen and Phil

Fantasy fulfilled, you can check that one off the list now. :)

Via Al Fin comes notice of a practical, and - importantly - currently license-able for public by-ways use apparently, a flying car (OK, more of a dune buggy really). As Al Fin notes, the engineering requirements seem fairly modest to modify this for a pontoon arrangement of some sort and create a true all-surface accessible vehicle.

We're gettin' there fella's.

The Race To Genomic Identity

Eric Raymond has an incite-full (I pun) post up at his blog Armed and Dangerous titled A Specter Is Haunting Genetics. His principle point (I pun again) being that, as we come to more fully classify a statistically meaningful representative sample of the human population, we will almost certainly discover ... well, let him say it for himself:

(1) we will shortly have genomic-sequence information on hundreds of thousands of human beings from all over the planet, enough to build a detailed map of human genetic variation and a science of behavioral genetics. (2) We will confirm that variant alleles correlate strongly with significant measures of human ability and character, beginning with IQ and quite possibly continuing to distribution of time preference, sociability, docility, and other important traits. (3) We will discover that these same alleles correlate significantly with traditional indicia of race.

As I take his meaning to be, we will be able to identify the individual genetic variations that are presently classified by external physical appearance - in a word: race. The squabbles begin and degenerate rapidly thereafter.

In the early-to-mid 1980's I worked for the US Navy at a research facility. Along with one other man named Peter, we were the only two people within the building during the night shift we worked. The building was fairly well RF shielded so, to the limited extent talk radio existed back then, it wasn't really an option anyway. :) The job largely consisted of setting up multi-hour long sequences and the occasional crack of dawn customer requirement. IOW we talked. A lot - and about much we wouldn't ordinarily have inspiration or inclination to consider in other circumstance.

As it happens, this same general topic (the socio-political impact of genetic identifiers) was one we repeatedly considered.

Now remember, this was the '80's; Reagan was walkin' the walk, the economy was roaring back, Crick and Watson and DNA were a recurring theme in news stories of the day (much of them crime related) and the "nurture/nature" argument was much in vogue due to the prominence of the McMartin Pre-School (and other sex abuse) trials over those years. Peter's family was politically active (and significant in state politics) and he had a trained artist's sense of story, while I was a longtime reader of speculative fiction with an eclectic employment and education history; we were well equipped to apply "what if ..." to a wide range of topics. No real way for us to tell how well grounded, or even if, those thoughts were, but there you have it ... stopped clocks and all that comes quickly to mind.

We eventually settled on the creation of a personal "label" as the most direct means to overcome the history and industry that has accrued to race and eugenics-related perceptions. The idea being that, since individuals are apparently the result of some mixture of genetic inheritance and social environmental inputs, an individual identification code based on their individual genetics would be a method for refuting the opposition that seemed even then an almost certain response to such detailed knowledge of humanity. This would only work if there was a large enough sample base to make such classification statistically meaningful and there was created a social-input chart of some nature (that quantified the general characteristics of a given growth experience or influence - much in the manner that present-day dating sites do, as it turns out). This last was always the critical stumbling block since we couldn't envision a means for doing such a thing (neither of us being surnamed Berners-Lee you understand :)).

I'm hopeful that with his professional background and personal depth of interest, Eric will have a better sense of the practicality of Peter's and my early stumbling about in the night hours. If one day I become Will Brown XY-7543GT-&%76-%#$@&54A instead of XXX-YY-ZZZZ, then it becomes possible to argue that my (everyone's) genetic code isn't "racist" at all, but is an accurate measure of both my potential medical state as well as my capability generally, absent some form of intervention. Instead of sticking me in a niche, it becomes possible to quantify the trans-human fantasy onto a scale of feasibility as well as work to remove group classification from societal consideration. To the extent that humans are social animals, possession of a means to characterise each other in advance of detailed individual knowledge will remain necessary to continuation of the human condition. Having a mechanism to make such pre-judgement as individually accurate as clinically possible seems a useful alternative to the historical standard.

Or, so said all both of us.

Krav, Y'all

Some days ago (OK, 10 days ago :)) Helen Smith wrote a post asking how people cope with the stress induced by the news reports and commentary we all are inundated with. I found her principal response particularly interesting:

My positive activity has been to re-read a book entitled Krav Maga: How to Defend Yourself Against Armed Assault and to think about returning to the Kra Maga lessons I was taking ...

This book by Imi Sde-Or (aka: Imrich Lichtenfeld, founder of the Krav Maga system) has much to recommend it, especially as a means of insight into thinking that lead to Krav Maga, but it isn't all that clearly written without an additional source of explanation/instruction. With that in mind, I would like to recommend to the good Doctor she also read these two books as well:

KRAV MAGA The Contact Combat System Of The Israeli Defense Forces by David Kahn.

KRAV MAGA For Beginners by Darren Levine, John Whitman & Ryan Hoover.

Imi's book presents Krav Maga as the complete system he taught in an apparently holistic manner. The other two books present the material in a format based upon the latter-day belt ranking system Imi grafted onto Krav Maga to better correlate his school with other established martial systems. I find the subject matter to be more clearly presented in the hierarchical structure although it is helpful to be able to orient a given instruction in Imi's format upon occasion.

Full disclosure; I train here. East Texas Krav Maga is part of Darren Levine's Krav Maga Worldwide self-defense and fitness organisation and I'm pretty sure I trained with Darren Levine himself on at least a few occasions (as part of a large class in 1990/91 when I still lived in the Los Angeles area).

I'm hopeful that Dr. Helen will be willing to engage in a somewhat wide-ranging discussion of issues and questions that relate to Krav Maga directly as well as to its place in society at large, perhaps as a series of post-and-response on our respective blogs. With that in mind, one of the issues I think I see occurring is formation of a type of schism within the ranks of Krav Maga practitioners. My impression (largely from David Kahn's books as well as Krav Maga websites like this one) is that there is some dispute regarding the type as well as methodology of the instruction being variously offered at Krav Maga International (centered in Israel) schools and Krav Maga Worldwide or Alliance schools (centered in the US). I'm quite sure that at least some of this is an unintended consequence of marketing efforts within the various school organisations. I'm also certain that some of it is a fundamental dispute.

This KMW school is in Knoxville, but it is unclear to me which tradition Dr. Helen trained in; International, Worldwide or Alliance. What I'm especially hopeful she can offer informed insight into is the human psychology of combat training, both the effects upon the individual as well as upon the system itself (how much does the psychological trauma associated with combat and its after effects influence the form and content of the course of instruction for civilians/military and the in-between circumstance of police as example). Since Dr. Helen is also a shooter, I look forward to her observations and insights into that aspect of the Krav Maga experience as well. While I don't share her particular health concerns, I have my own and hope to share thoughts on the fitness benefits of Krav Maga as opposed (or perhaps better, as well as) to other techniques.

What I'm not interested in is some sort of comparative analysis or politicization of the various viewpoints within KM. It is useful to understand what those are and the history behind them (if only to better understand the issues that lead up to their development), but my interest is in better understanding the capabilities of KM and gaining a more complete understanding of the system.

I will be writing more on this topic in future, but for the moment await the doctor's response.