Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. Our community has been around for a long time: 14 years, 3 months, 2 weeks and 5 days, to be exact. During that span, 9,340 members have made 528,244 posts. Until today, only 2 had made 10,000 posts or more. sensei8 (Bob) has become the third. Bob is very popular in our community. It starts with a willingness to help people. His 50+ years in the martial arts have afforded him with a lot of experience, which he readily shares with others. It's fair to say that his contributions here have helped thousands of people. That's a huge mark. That long history of study has earned him many interesting stories that members enjoy reading. His continual prompts, encouraging other members to share their stories, have led to countless people opening up and allowing us to get to know them better. This trait probably gets overlooked, but it's so valuable to our community. It brings new people into the fold and helps them feel more comfortable. The list of members, who can say that Bob made them feel more comfortable here, is not a small one. For many of them, Bob was the first person they ever talked to at KF. That's a big deal. I believe that the respect that members have for Bob is furthered by his openness and willingness to grow, through our forums and elsewhere. The flexibility to learn and to change perspectives, even with a long history in the arts, is something that makes him someone who is not just respected, but approachable. Bob has been a member of our community for 7 and a half years, a staff member for almost 4 years and has racked up a record (tied with Brian/bushido_man96) 13 KarateForums.com Awards, including 3 consecutive Member of the Year honors, until he lost eligibility due to becoming a staff member (though that was followed by 2 consecutive Staff Member of the Year awards). This is a fair representation of how the community feels about him. For those who would like to know more about Bob, check out the interview he did for our 500,000 posts celebration. Bob, I'd like to thank you for the amazing, awe-inspiring contributions that you have made to KarateForums.com. Thank you for your efforts as a member of staff. Thank you for making so many feel welcome here. I am grateful for all of your support over the years. (And thank you to Brian for introducing our community to Bob). Please join me in congratulating Bob, and I'd love to hear any Bob-related stories and/or how Bob's posts here have impacted you. Thank you for reading. Congrats Bob! Sincerely, Patrick

This is Noah's blog: http://www.karateobsession.com/

The second video is marked as private, but the first one looks fine. Thanks for posting them.

Thanks for sharing, Nidan Melbourne. Patrick

Is it time to resurrect this sucker?

That image is meant to divide people. I question the intentions of whoever created it. They could have been trying to troll people (provoke a negative, emotional responsible). They could have wanted to boost their Facebook engagement numbers by generating a lot of likes/comments/shares. They could have been a traditional martial artist wanting to rally people against MMA. They could have been a mixed martial artist who wants to rally people against traditional arts ("look at how they portray us!"). No matter what they were trying to do, their intent wasn't noble. When it comes to the martial arts, I have no bias. I don't practice them, and I've made no secret of that. I just like connecting people. When I launched these forums 14+ years ago, I had no preconceived notions of martial artists. During that time, I have probably interacted with thousands of martial artists. I have banned hundreds of them from this community. When you aren't knee deep in a specific art, looking at your friends vs. the school down the street, comparing yourselves to those you encounter, the martial arts world probably looks a little different. From that view, there really is no correlation between the art and the quality of the person. There is no "most of the people in this art are good, but only a few from this one are." It just doesn't exist. I believe that any "evidence" to the contrary is anecdotal at best. Our community is a wonderful mix of traditional martial artists, mixed martial artists and people who would consider themselves to be both. No matter what group you are a part of, whether you are a UFC fighter or a strict traditionalist, the person who created this image is not your friend. You are all martial artists. Don't let people divide you for their own gain.

Congrats Kwon_Artist!

Thanks for the replies. No worries. Haha, this was definitely a bust. No worries, maybe we'll try again in the future. Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We recognize one member every month as the KarateForums.com Member of the Month for their positive contributions to this community. The September selection is... Titanium. Congratulations! Thank you for the great contributions that you have made thus far. Sincerely, Patrick

Thanks Titanium.

Hey all, I haven't played fantasy football since 2009, but I was thinking of playing again this year. Would anyone be up for a KarateForums.com league? Ideally, I would have asked earlier, but I just thought of it now. It would be good to have at least 10 people involved. I went ahead and created a simple league on Yahoo! so anyone who is interested could join: http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/f1/1028374 When you join, please use your KarateForums.com username as your team name so we can tell who is who. I have set the draft time as Sunday, September 6 at 9 PM ET. The first day of games in the NFL in September 10. I could change/push back the draft, but even if you can't make it, your team can be autopicked for you. If we don't get 10 people, I can always cancel the league, but judging from the popularity of the annual football thread, maybe we can put together a good group. Thanks, Patrick

Thanks man.

Thank you for sharing this, Hawkmoon. I did notice that you had been away. What a challenging year you have had. Glad your Dad is doing better! Congratulations on the new rank. Patrick

These messages are very kind. Thank you. Patrick

Welcome back, Nijil Jacob. Patrick

Thanks for the backstory. And for starting this thread. I'm sure you aren't alone in your feelings. Patrick

Hey all, This post is number 25,000 for me here at KarateForums.com. This community has been online for 5,206 days, which means I have made 4.80 posts per day. What I really like about this number is that, in the context of these forums, it's not a huge one. There have been 527,448 posts made by 9,334 different members. Despite the fact that I have been here from day one, my 25,000 posts account for only 4.73% of the posts within our forums. Many other members have made many posts. There are 95 other members who have 1,000 posts or more and 201 other members that have made 500 posts or more. I'd like to take this opportunity to specifically recognize the members, from that group, who have been a part of our community this year. Thank you to Brian (bushido_man96), Bob (sensei8), Pat (SaiFightsMS), Alex (tallgeese), Heidi (ninjanurse), Danielle (DWx), Bill (ps1), Shawn (cathal), Bill (MasterPain), Gareth (Harkon72), Noah (Wastelander), yamesu, John (Zaine, whose birthday its today), Nidan Melbourne, Devin (Lupin1), P.A.L, Rusty (pittbullJudoka), Mykel (ShoriKid), Jennifer (Rateh), IcemanSK, CredoTe, Hawkmoon, Montana, stonecrusher69, Safroot, Spartacus Maximus, mal103, Archimoto and Ken (wagnerk). I am grateful for the outstanding contributions that you have made to our community during your many years here. When I launched this community, I definitely didn't have this sort of longevity in mind. But of everything I have been involved with, this community is one of the things that I am most proud of. Thank you to all of the members who help make it great. Patrick

Me and my brothers just saw Weird Al for the second time. Such a great show. Been listening to his stuff non-stop recently, following the concert.

I get a kick out of your username whenever I see it, bigpopparob2000. Glad that you're still with us after all of these years. I don't think you are "out of line" at all. Perhaps just a little oversensitive about something that really doesn't affect you. I golf and have been around the game my entire life. I know it to be a game of integrity and honor. When you make an error resulting in a penalty, you are often the only one who knows it. As such, you self-report it. Otherwise, you are cheating. For all the people who take mulligans, there are plenty who play the game by the rules and try to card a good score. There is also a lot of etiquette that comes into play. Where to walk, how to fix your ball mark, rake the bunker when you exit it, etc. You leave the course as it was when you came. I also follow a general standard of dress. But at the same time, if I see a bunch of 4-8 year olds with untucked shirts running around the range beating balls in all directions, I don't get offended or scowl at them. I smile. Most of them won't play golf when they get older, maybe some will. But it doesn't matter to me. Looking at martial art schools, I think you have an activity that is very attractive to little kids. Who hasn't pretended to be a ninja? If that's all it is, a birthday party where you pretend to be a ninja, I don't see the harm. The martial arts is a serious thing, but it does not need to always take itself seriously. I certainly wouldn't use it to judge the quality of the school. A martial arts school is, for a majority of its hours, an unused space that someone is paying rent for. If they want to use that space to host a birthday party and help the bottom line a little, that seems like a reasonable use of the space. I'm sure some kids do become students after they (or, perhaps more accurately, their parents) discover a school due to a party, but I think for most schools that do it, it's probably just a common sense, safe way to generate a few dollars, more than a marketing idea. Just my thoughts. Patrick

Glad that you found some memories in there, Pat. Thanks Titanium. Patrick

Congrats neoravencroft!

Happy birthday to John (Zaine)! Thank you for all of the contributions that you have made to our community. Patrick

Thanks. I thought you made the point really well. Bob, no one is saying that your objections don't have validity. In fact, I think most people on this thread agree completely with you. I only disagree with the notion that this should never, ever be possible. Why would that be appropriate? If it is a meeting of CIs and CIs are welcome, who are you to decide who is and is not qualified to attend? I mean, if you want to hold your own meeting and decide who is in the club and who isn't, that's OK. But if you are just an attendee of the meeting as a CI, why would it be appropriate for you to say who and who should not attend in the position they hold within their own school? What would you think if a fellow attendee did that to you? There are football coaches in the NFL, at big colleges, at tiny colleges, in high school, in Pop Warner and in various volunteer roles. Most coaches aren't Don Shula. But the coach who guides a pack of 10 year olds is still a coach. It doesn't mean he's a world class coach, but he's helping some people, and I don't mind that he calls himself a coach. I don't see anything that would suggest that this kid is doing this for money as the primary motivator. There are plenty of other ways to make money. Thanks, Patrick

Point of clarification: from reading the articles, it seems like he became head instructor at 17. Certified at 16, teaching full time at 17. Maybe I read it wrong, though. I was going to raise the point that Danielle did, which I think is a great one: once in a while, you hear of a teenager running a wildly successful business. Of course, they are the rare exception. But that's the point: there are exceptions. Bob, your list of what CI does actually reads fairly closely to what a business owner does. Change a few words and it's pretty much dead on. I didn't find your yellow belt example to be a good one. That speaks more to me about the marketing aspects of the arts. In your story, the prospective student doesn't respect the school because of the color of the instructors belt. But in reality, the color of the instructors belt is, at best, only a partial indicator of their ability as an instructor. Wearing a black belt is kind of like having a row of trophies in your lobby. It's a marketing thing more so than an actual indication of instruction quality. I don't think that it's completely inconceivable that there can be a teenager who is a decent (I didn't say great, which he could be, but decent) head instructor. I don't think you can say that. Would you even consider most adult head instructors "decent"? A teenage business owner will deal with the exact same criticisms. How can you trust the business? The kid will probably just blow your money! How can you trust the instruction at the school? It's the same sort of thing. It's a criticism of mental maturity, experience and responsibility. And yet, kids who check those boxes do exist. What do we do with them? What I do professionally today, I did when I was 15, and I faced some of these thoughts. What to do with me? Should I be held to your idea of what I should be, rather than the idea of what I want to be? I realize that everyone here is just offering their opinions as an onlooker, not thinking of themselves as the parents of this kid, but it might be something to consider. So you won't be the teenage business owner's customer. That's your choice. You'd happily have him as your paper boy (kind of a dated reference, heh), but you couldn't trust his business, right? Because he's probably not responsible. He's probably like the teenagers you've known in your life. For the same reason, you couldn't trust him to run a small martial arts school in Mississippi. He can't help anyone. You can't trust his instruction. These criticisms, between business owner and martial arts instructor, aren't dissimilar. You have an idea of what a head instructor should be. And because it doesn't come close to meeting that idea, it's problematic. But don't many adults fail to meet that same idea? Many adults are awful martial arts instructors and terrible, irresponsible business owners. All of this doesn't mean he won't be the ideal for someone else. It doesn't mean he can't command respect from adults. It doesn't mean he can't reach kids and teenagers in a way many adults can't. And it doesn't mean he can't be a better teacher or business owner. I believe that a 16 year old can run a business "alone and independently," (quoting Spartacus Maximus here), but that's not what he's doing and that's not what most business owners do, is it? Most people have someone they rely on, whether it be an employee, an accountant, a temp agency, whatever. While emancipated minors do exist, it's pretty clear he's not alone (his parents are even mentioned in the article). As an aside, the website mainly looks impressive in the context of the martial arts, where many schools have poor websites. I could set something up like this in a few hours with maybe $50. There are some assumptions in this thread and the idea that this was a costly website is one of them. This is just a template site that the Gracies offer to schools. For example: http://www.graciejiujitsudestin.com/ http://graciectc.com/ashburn/ What everyone is saying is generally true, for almost everyone. But I do think it's problematic when you never allow for the exception, because exceptions do exist. That's really all I'm saying. If you are that exception - or your kid is that exception - you reach high and you go for it. Patrick

Welcome, Titanium. Glad to have you. Patrick