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Western Martial Arts

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Notes from presentation at Penguicon on Saturday:

4-5:30PM Birch Fencing Demo Bob Scheltema, Brandon Scheltema Witness some non-choreographed, steel sword combat and you might just learn what Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black were talking about in The Princess Bride. The fencing demonstration (fencing, the art of defense, or from the German Fechten, to fight) will include discussions about the growing Western Marital Arts combat movement. Learn the fighting styles of the Italian Masters of Defense (Bonetti, Capo Ferro, Agrippa), along with the combat philosophies of the Spanish (Thibault), German and English schools. Western Marital Arts combat includes rapier, longsword, basket hilt and good old wrestling and kicking.

English style, following Silver’s book ..basket hilt broadswords…Strong on cuts…Silver’s “true guard” seems very much like the hanging guard in Scottish books.

German longswords..Two handed grip–off hand on pommel for leverage. If you get close, use wrestling…takedowns.

Italian rapier… thrusting

Attack your opponent’s sword hand–it will really be sufficient if you can put it out of action.

The Italian and Spanish schools were more gentlemanly. Less grappling than the English and Germans. German texts are more battle oriented, as opposed to street fighting or dueling.

Wearing period clothes, shoes, and weapons makes for a better understanding of why things were done the way they were. Smooth shoes explain tiptoe stance in one period book–that actually gives a better grip on the floor.

There were also several presentations from the Aegis Sword Academy. These had more emphasis on practical fighting than on reproduction of a specific period style, and in fact, everybody from there wore modern clothes. One presentation was:

8:30-9:30PM Birch Sword Demo: “Florentino: Case of Blades” Aegis Sword Academy The grace of fantasy’s double swords began as short sword and long knife – the weapons of a back alley fight in sixteenth century Florence.

The Brain is a Computer–Maybe not

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Notes from a panel at Penguicon Satrurday afternoon

2:30 to 4 PM Maple A Brain-As-Computer Metaphor Karl Schroeder, Ron Hale-Evans, Dr. Jonathan “Sullydog” Sullivan Cutting-edge SF author Karl Schroeder joins Ron Hale-Evans, author of Mind Performance Hacks, and Dr. Jonathon Sullivan MD PhD in neurology, to consider “The brain is a computer, the mind is software.” That’s been the ruling metaphor of cognitive science, neurology and AI studies for decades. The software of thought is supposed to operate much like that of a computer, going from discrete state to discrete state. However a new study from Cornell shows that our thoughts change continuously; the brain works “in shades of grey”. And there are good reasons to think that the mind is not an artifact of the brain alone, but is extended into the environment as well

Is consciousness necessary for intelligence?

Consider “Blind sight”–seeing something without knowing that one has seen it

If you think of the brain as a fixed array of neurons, each of which is either on or off, then indeed you are talking about a computer, but…

Neuroplasticity: The brain can change.

The brain is not just array of neurons-other tissues are clearly doing important things .

We don’t have one physical model to describe nature at the most fundamental level: We need both quantum mechanics and relativity. So it is not surprising that we need more than one model to describe the brain.

Direct interaction with environment. A baseball player does not catch a fly ball by solving the differential equations that govern the ball’s. Also consider how cockroaches scatter when you catch them. This is automatic–not conscious.

“Consciousness cannot be aware of its own absence”

Roger Penrose: Consciousness as quantum gravity effect.

The cognitive system is not just the brain: It is the brain plus its environment.

Consciousness may have a very low bandwidth…may not use much of brain’s power. Large amounts of what we do is unconscious. Consciousness just along for the ride..is it important? With experience you do more decisions automatically. Consciousness is for novel situations. Mastery of something is to make it unconscious.

“It’s all a blur”…consiousness attenuated.

You do something automatically, an your brain “back dates” the decision to do it. This has moral and theological implications “An array of neurons did this not me. But …. These experiments have been challenged.

“It’s all a blur”…consiousness attenuated.

Partial knowledge is often enough…lot of people know how to use computers, but few of them really know how they work.

Ask a pure mathematician “what is a number”–not an easy question.

References:

On the Origin of Objects

Smolin on quantum gravity.

The User Illusion

Synaptic Self

Penguicon – Saturday afternoon

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Frank Hayes is here. Mia found him in the Con Suite and we had a wonderful talk, catching up on the last 10 years. We just went to his concert. Hearing him sing (and singing along with him) is still great fun. One of his songs (an old song) was about S-100 bus computers. Looking around the room it was obvious that much of the audience had been born long after S-100 computers became obsolete.

Something Different

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This weekend mia_mcdavid, our son James, and I are going to Penguicon, a combined science fiction and open source software/Linux convention in Michigan. This would not be a prudent financial decision, but we had purchased non-refundable airline tickets before realizing what a deep hole we were in. Mia is really keen on the music there and in getting away from that of the local SF scene. We also hope to see an old friend from Chicago fandom, Frank Hayes.

Mia is driving, and is visiting a friend in the Chicago suburbs tonight. James and I will fly out tomorrow afternoon and she will meet us at the Detroit airport. James actually seems quite excited about this. We will bringing his laptop which can help keep him entertained as well as giving us some connectivity (the convention has free wi-fi). Alas, it runs Windows XP. However, I will also bring my Nokia 770 internet tablet, a proper Linux device.

I was very reluctant to go at first, but I am warming to the idea. The programming is much more diverse than I had expected. In addition to all sorts of techie stuff and the usual SF panels, there is a martial arts track and some items about food. Not terribly surprising if you actually know geeks and fans. There is a techie twist to the refreshments: Ice cream made with liquid nitrogen. That brings back memories of my work in a cryogenics lab at Stanford, more than 30 years ago. In fact on paper in HTML the programming looks far more extensive and interesting than I have seen at the local Twin Cities SF conventions.

While I expect to look in on all sorts of things there, I will definitely be looking at some of the open source computing sessions. I need a reminder that computing can be fun. My managers at work have been trying to hide that from me for a year now.

Birds

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From a Carleton classmate:

….big news from the Arb! M spotted a short-eared owl twice this week in the arb. This is a fairly big deal – he’s a pretty fair birder & has only seen one once – in Hawaii! He says that they are really ungainly flyers. He said it looked like it was flapping two ironing boards.

It looks like the restoration efforts are paying off – they’re beginning to see the return of new & fairly uncommon animal species.