This inspiring story from whdh.com is well worth a read:

LAWRENCE, Mass. — A Lawrence woman who said she had never been in a fight in her entire life fended off an attack from a much larger man late last month.

She’s 5-foot-1 and barely more than 100 pounds, but full of fight.

“I don’t know where it came from,” said April Marchessault.

The mother of three was caught off guard when a man snuck into her home late at night and grabbed her from behind.

“It was like covering his whole face, was a gray t-shirt,” said Marchessault.

Chief John Romero of the Lawrence Police Department said 47-year-old Edgardo Montes planned to rape Marchessault.

“Absolutely, given the way he attacked the woman,” said Chief Romero.

Just by looking at the suspect (PHOTO: Montes mug shot), it would appear to be a lopsided fight. And it was.

Marchessault kicked Montes down a flight of stairs, severely spraining his knee. She then punched his face so many times that she hurt her own hand.

“Then when we were halfway up the driveway, my hand was killing me, so that’s when I picked up the trash barrel and then just kept whacking him in the head,” said Marchessault.

During the fight, Marchessault’s three kids were sleeping inside the house. Her father woke up, though, and the two of them held Montes at bay until police arrived.

“He couldn’t get up anyway. He kept trying to get up and I just kept stomping on his leg,” said Marchessault.

Montes, who is already a Level 2 sex offender for a 1995 rape conviction, is back behind bars.

Police gave all the credit to Marchessault.

“My sense is that this individual, given his history, would’ve just attacked somebody else,” said Chief Romero.

Montes is currently being held in jail without bail.

An excellent post describing the Instinctive Drowning Response, and why this is not what you expect from a drowning person.

Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. Th e respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.

Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.

Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.

Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.

From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

(Source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006)

The advice for parents is also key

And parents: children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

(H/T to Daring Fireball)

Colin Richards of Arts of Mars recently announced that Dave Rawlings’ rule set would be the one used for his upcoming World Wide Open Championship to be held in Apelern, Germany this summer. This is a Good Thing.

There’ve been debates about rule sets for historical european swordfighting for a few months now. Dave Rawlings, of the Boars Tooth Fight School and the name behind the Rawlings Range sword simulators has been promoting a standard set of rules for competitions. Whilst I haven’t taken part much in the debate I have followed it pretty closely and I have to admit I thought it had taken a very wrong turn. I thought they were overly wordy and far too complex. They looked like they had all the bad features of something designed by committee, and worse a committee of people who rarely actually met and instead had disjointed and poorly managed on-line communications. The debate became acrimonious in places and I thought this project was destined to crash and burn.

The rules were given their first dry run at the opening event for the Knight’s Shop in Conwy earlier this year. I was there to teach Modern Bartitsu and, after my class, I ducked out of watching the earlier parts of the competition whilst I caught up with people. I was downstairs from the tourney and the news I heard during set up seemed to confirm my fears. Over an hour into the event and the rules were still being communicated and discussed. The judges all seemed happy and confident with what they were doing, but the competitors less so. Given these guys were coming from a very wide variety of clubs and for most this was their first time competing this was perhaps understandable. However my heart sank when I heard some of the moans about complexity.

After the first round was out of the way I went to watch and had a quick chat with Dave, who was martialling the event. He had Colin Richards and the Thomas Brothers judging, Tim Gallagher referring and Phil Marshall as time and score keeper. Very experienced guys with good knowledge of the arts. The arena (pictured above) was a circle, with the judges at fixed positions around it (Or at least they were supposed to be, Colin seemed to find it hard to stay in place despite Dave frequently reminding him!). The biggest challenge I saw was getting the guys kitted up and ready before each bout. The Knights Shop had provided hocky armour, gloves and groin protection that was mandatory for all fighters and getting them into and out of it was delaying the bouts. With the help of a very pretty lady I was able to get this sorted out and get the fighters out to their bouts in a more timely manner.

This was when I was very pleasantly surprised. The rules worked. And they worked well. Tim called out engagements, and judges scored them by the raising of flags (improvised at this event, but I understand proper ones have been purchased). Phil recorded the score and Dave made sure everything was running smoothly. After the initial teething issues it seemed to go very smoothly. Phil had written a nice time and score display program that was projected onto one wall for the competitors to see. Sadly this was not as visible to the crown, but otherwise it worked well.

There was some complexity to the rules which could probably stand to be reduced, and the way they are communicated needs tightening up. However they work. The best fighters won their bouts, which were of a sufficient length to give people a chance without them becoming boring for the audience. Effective judging and refereeing is key and not everyone was 100% on the ball. I think it’s fair to say that Colin, whilst a great guy and a gifted instructor is not the best choice as a corner judge! The other judges and especially Tim as ref did sterling jobs. Really very impressive.

Dave and the other guys involved are well aware of the areas they need to improve but I think the basic premise of the rules is sound. I’m sure the next run out they get at the World Wide Opens will be equally as successful.

It’s been posted before, but it is worth remembering what civilisation looks like. Democratic, free (and affluent) South Korea has the lights on. In starving, communist North Korea it’s always Earth Hour. They simply don’t have the lights to turn on.

In 1914 Sir Edward Grey commented on ‘the lamps going out across Europe’ as world war beckoned. This is the vision the fascists who have attached themselves to the green movement want to see. They want to limit and restrict progress, to keep us all in the same miserable darkness as the North Koreans. Making efficient and sensible use of energy is vital, as is managing the effects of climate change. That does not mean turning the lights out, it means researching and developing future solutions. That is how we’ll get meaningful change.

Orwell wrote of his vision of the future as a ‘boot stamping on a human face – forever’. Our future stamper would be doing it in the dark.

Craig Douglas of Shivworks.com is one of the best martial arts thinkers and teachers out there. The limited exposure I have had to him and his material has fundamentally changed the way I view self protection and combatives. This latest video of him, teaching BJJ from  the context of an armed civilian, is very good. It also tells me I *really* need to improve my ground game. Now is there a BJJ club near me?

On March 21st I’ll be starting a 6 week beginners’ course in Modern Bartitsu. Details can be found here. The course will run every Sunday for 6 weeks, and will cover the basics of punching, kicking, grappling and stick work, as well as some skills for dealing with aggressive behaviour and the looking at the historical context of the art.

I hope to see you there!

PZ Myers is one of the blogosphere’s big boys. For those not in the know he’s a biologist and professor at the University of Minnesota in the US. He’s also the author of probably the biggest atheist blog on the net, Pharyngula and has a deservedly devoted following. As well as his delightfully sharp writing he hosts some of the most fascinating comment debates on the net, where evolutionists are regularly skewered. I’m very much a fan.

It appears that recently some chaps calling themselves libertarians kicked up a stink in those same comments and that has resulted in a couple of posts in which PZ makes some rather negative comments about what he describes as a pathology (I say apparently as the link posted on his site doesn’t seem to be working). A number of commenters go much, much further before the whole thing devolves into an argument about global warming.

I made my own views on climate change clear last year, and received a fair bit of flack from other libertarians for it. I’ve read a fair bit on the subject since then, and my views have not changed. I think that human activity is most likely to be the most significant cause of climate change and that it is incumbent on us all to do what we can to stop that. However it does not therefore follow that the state should force us all to act accordingly, especially when it has such a poor track record on such matters. I am deeply suspicious of those who seek to exaggerate the threat of climate change in order to control society or to meddle in the affairs of other. I see little difference between that and the other fear triggers such as terrorism or immigration. A lot of libertarians would disagree with me, but certainly not all.

Which leads us to the issue I must take with PZ Myer’s posts. I imagine he’s quite right to poke fun at the particular commenters he does, but he is dead wrong to equate all libertarians with the loons he has been dealing with. This might be more to do with the vagaries of political definitions between the US and the rest of the world. In most of the world the political views I espouse could pretty neatly defined as liberal, but in the US, and more and more in the UK, this becoming to mean centre-left statist. Certainly the US tea-baggers and disciples of Glenn Beck are not what I would consider libertarian. They love it when the government gets behind their chosen causes, and cry foul only when it is something they do not like being promoted.

I’m fully aware that this will appear to be a ‘No True Scotsman’ argument, or playing with semantics, but that is just not the case. Pharyngula commenter Walton explains why much more eloquently than I can. In short, just because someone chooses to co-opt the language of liberty to suit their own agenda does not make them the real deal, be they a caricature demagogue of the Religious Right, laughing all the way to the bank, or a lost and deluded weak man hell bent on retaining power at any cost.

My current work takes me around the country talking to people in the NHS about what they do, and how they can use IT to improve how they work (or more specifically how they can use the product their bosses have already bought). It’s a fascinating role, especially as I get to talk to people who are not hugely computer literate, but who use them at both home and work.

Over lunch at a recent workshop I was chatting to a couple of nurses and they were talking about how they use computers at home. Tesco.com, facebook and the BBC news seemed to be the things they most looked at, but both reported problems with their young children. One had all kinds of problems with her PC after her unsupervised (!) 6 year old somehow turned off the firewall (or Syman-wotsit as she actually called it). Both were moaning about how complicated it all was and how they really just wanted something simple with which to browse the web.

I was immediately reminded of the car analogy Jon Gruber posted recently when musing on the iPad. The idea being that few people know how their cars work – they know how to operate the user interface but nothing beyond that. This was what these ladies, and I imagine many others needed – a simple device that they could use to browse the net without having to worry about things like updates, spyware checkers, firewalls and the like. I could also do with something like that for my very IT-illiterate girlfriend.

Something like an iPad, or one of those kid specific linux builds might be the answer. I say might because I’m sure the ladies I was talking to, or their older children, would need to sit and do some serious mouse & keyboard work at some point, and I’m not sure that asking them to install a new OS, or even run one in a virtual machine will work. They would probably get on with an Apple, but the cost would be prohibitive I guess what is needed is some kind of switchable ‘kiddie mode’ that can take away some of the complexity, combined with an OS that does not require the user to go dicing under the hood. Does such a thing exist?

Regardless of this however I was rather shocked that a mum would leave such a young kid browsing the web unsupervised. I’m not a parent so I can’t speak from experience, but I would have expected web time to be supervised for children. Am I naive in thinking that?

I can remember exactly when and where I got into roleplaying games. It was the spring of 1989 in a school camp in Scotland. I was 9 years old and obsessed with Lord of the Rings, martial arts and horse riding. The camp was a dull affair – walking around some woods cataloging trees and insects, learning about the industrial revolution and being very careful not to make too much noise.. During the few hours we had free in the evenings we were supposed to play football and the like, keep out of the way of the teachers and not break any windows or each other. Football wasn’t really my thing and so I initially spent a lot of time reading. On the second day I noticed a group of boys from the year above me heading off to one of the classrooms. The next day I plucked up the courage to ask what they were doing.

‘MERP’ was the less than illuminating reply. This, it turned out was a game where you could pretend to be a hero, or a villain; to run around Tolkein’s Middle Earth and kill orcs. There were no pieces, no board just imagination, paper and some odd looking dice. I could be anything I wanted, anything in the whole of the Tolkein mythos. Like a Dúnadan fighting monk with a warhorse. This was pretty much the coolest thing I had ever seen. 2 hours in I was hooked. MERP proved too complex for me to play with my friends at home, and a helpful cousin provided a first edition copy of D&D that he had never played. This was the real gateway drug. 1st edition dungeon crawls were soon followed by AD&D, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Star Wars and tabletop wargaming. I had a freaking huge dice bag and shelves full of rulebooks.

As soon as I went to the Comprehensive school I started a gaming club, with a friend running a totally awesome Warhammer 40k game with on some homebrew rules taken from the Fighting Fantasy books. This was where I met up with friends who I still have now. As we got older we joined a larger gaming club and after a while I got a job running games for the local community centre. The games we played became more and more varied  – Blood Bowl, Mighty Empires and the magnificent Cyberpunk 2013. This latter co-incided with my discovery of William Gibson, and the whole cyberpunk literary movement. I was obsessed.

It was about this time I started to get into practical, non-McDojo martial arts and shooting. The Cyberpunk 2013 and later 2020 systems worked well with these, being some of the most gritty and realistic rules out there. I could look at the rules and see that it tied in with what I knew about combat, small arms and terminal ballistics (And I knew a lot about such things for a teenager. I even made a special trip to the library of the Imperial War Museum to do research). However I began to get frustrated by other game systems. The models they used to deal with combat were either too abstract, too time consuming or just damn wrong. Take a dagger for example. A standard dagger such as might be carried by any baddie from central casting. Something like one of these. Imagine someone plunging that into you with force. It’s probably going to kill you and if it doesn’t you are certainly not going to be running around afterwards. Compare that to AD&D where a mid-level character would need to be stabbed repeatedly about 15 times to get the same effect. If that mid-level character also had a huge 2-handed axe then he and the dagger man would take turns bashing each other until one fell over. It all seemed a bit silly and as a result of this nonsense I pretty much stopped playing fantasy games. This was all my friends wanted to play and so RPGs pretty much fell by the wayside.

After leaving University  Wizards of the Coast took all the money they had made from selling cards to and bought a real game company. The result was D&D 3rd Edition and I really liked it. A lot of the complexities and odd elements of the system had been sorted out (Roll high for attack rolls and roll low for saving throws. Who ever thought that was sensible?) and I began to play again. Regular games with friends got me re-enthused. However combat was still not right – too illogical and too abstract and I was still not satisfied.

Things got worse when I discovered Historical European Martial Arts. Learning about swordfighting ruined RPGs for me further. Everything in them was wrong. In real life a spearman has a clear advantage against a swordsman. A real longsword is closer to the D&D bastard sword in approach and weights about 3.5 lbs rather the sword shaped sledgehammer most games describe. You can bash steel plate with a sword all day and do nothing to it, whilst someone skilled with a rapier is incredibly difficult to hit without needing a huge shield or armour. Even the simple quarterstaff was wrong. What RPGs call quarterstaffing is actually halfstaffing – holding the staff in the middle and hitting with both ends as opposed to the more fearsome and sensible method of holding the staff at the end and using it’s reach and leverage. Even the scouts knew about this FFS!

This crossed over to movies and books, making it hard to take seriously some otherwise excellent works. Even those what tried to make an effort just irritated me more. Take Kingdom of Heaven for an example. In one scene  the main character is getting a lesson in swordfighting and is told to hold the sword high above his head, and is told this is called Posta di Falcone. So it is, by Filipo Vadi in his Liber de Arte Gladitoria Dimicandi from about 1485. Awesome, real swordfighting in a movie. Apart from the fact that the scene’s teacher translates it as the position of the hawk. Falcone. Hawk. Not falcon? Arrrrggghhhhhh!

Essentially I had developed an allergy. Much like ‘Font geek’ Michael Bierut I couldn’t experience such a lack of sense without feeling very uncomfortable. Moments of realism in films and games made me glad. The scene in Collateral where arch-loon Cruise guns down 2 thugs or pretty much every fight in The Duellists for example (That last is a wonderfully shot film BTW – check it out). RPGs were lost to me though. As much as I loved the majority of the experience I just could not get on with the combat mechanism.

Little did I know I was not alone. Jean Chandler had come to some of the same conclusions as me and, being an experienced game designer, got on with fixing the system. Using the Open Source nature of 3rd Ed D&D he has come up with a supplement that fixes almost all of the flaws in RPG combat. His Codex Martialis has had the effect of a very good pollen filter. I can now enjoy RPGs again.

The system itself is slightly more complex to set up than the original system – it uses dice pools and combat specific feats – but this offset in game play. So long as you have your sums done ahead of time combat becomes fluid and tactical. Gone is the ‘take turns bashing each other’ approach. Now I can meaningfully feint, slip and defend. There is a point to having a spear (which was, in one guise or another, the most common primary weapon for most soldiers before the invention of the gun). It is nothing short of wonderful.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not the most polished of presentations. The e-books are produced by a very small company so don’t expect the same standard of illustration or decoration as the main books. However this is more than made up for in both the excellence of the system. Jean is no mean swordsman himself and he has taken care to consult some real experts. The martial feats he includes have names based on real techniques and these are interspersed with real life accounts of combat and passages from historical fighting manuals.

Alongside the main rulebook goes a second that lists and illustrates an extremely wide selection of real life melee weapons, along with rules for using them. If you ever wanted a Schiavona or a cutlass in your game then this provides what you need. And everything weighs the right amount. No 15lb swords here!

I’m not going to describe the system in depth, there are other reviews that do that, but I do want to impress on you just what a remarkable feat it is that Jean has pulled off. He has done what I thought impossible – taken an abstract pencil and dice based game and created rules that allow for fast, fun and realistic combat.

Comes from the LPUK blog:

Listening to ‘Farming Today’ this morning, an East Anglian Farmer said twenty years ago he would be out with his tractor and snow plough keeping the rural roads open for his and neighbours benefit. He was told along with all other farmers to ‘stop it’ because they were using red diesel to power their tractors on the public highway and it was illegal.

Direct evidence that jobsworths and the obsession with taxing everything has lead to the reduction in voluntary emergency capacity.

This is why it is portant people do stuff for themselves. The state cannot solve all your problems for you. Get a spade.