omnifinite

I've beaten the comp since. Now I'm trying to get through it on hard. I'm a few chapters into the undead campaign so far. I haven't played any special maps. When I go onto battlenet looking for games I don't even know what most of the names they give them mean .

I always thought Jujitsu and Aikido were offshoots of Aikijujitsu... I guess I need to take a look at that website.

That's a good point. When I do a bo kata I feel like it's easier to get the movements right because I don't have to think about all the things my body is doing. I just have to think about where the bo is supposed to go and I tell my body to put it there. Once I know where the bo should be the rest seems to work itself out (and I'm less likely to think about it and mess it up). Maybe my form and movement are being improved in the process?

I've caught pieces of a pretty bad movie at night a few times. I think it has "Kickboxing" in the title, but there isn't a trace of Muay Thai in it. It's some low-budget feel-good movie about some little shopping center school and a tournament they go to. Half of the students aren't even wearing their uniforms or tying their belts right (and some of them are rather... out of shape). The tournament fights aren't even as impressive as those you'd see at a real local tournament with a real mcdojo. Of course the nemesis instructor is all militant and has his students cheat for him. It's really predictable. What bothers me most is that movies like this still probably cost more money than I'll ever see. How can people devote so many resources to something so wretched? Who's the studio head with all the millions of dollars who reads the script and says, "Yes! Of all the things in the world I could spend our money on, I choose this hands down!" There's something wrong with this world.

For a few months I was going to the gym to try to bulk/tone up a little... and I'd take these protein supplements that probably doubled or tripled the amount I usually get in a day. After a while they made me feel really nauseous... I just couldn't take them anymore. I wonder if that's related to this somehow.

I stopped for a long time due to moving far away from the place I originally trained at and not having the money to continue. Plus I seemed to be surrounded by nothing but mcdojos, and I figured they'd just do me more harm than good. Now I have money again and private instruction fell in my lap so I just started over with whole new styles.

My limitless limitations .

I'm in more than one. I can't vote .

Oh geez. Two groups of three billion people all lumped together. When did we stop being individuals?

I was taught to punch with the fist at 45 degrees. Guess I'm somewhere in between?

I think the worst injury I've had is a sprained thumb. Pretty sad, eh? Guess I need to try harder . And great story, AnonymousOne. I hope I have the means to train that much for that long.

I think both of those stories have taught us not to aim for the temple unless you really mean it.

Even if a kick were faster than a punch (yes, I'm getting here a bit late), the average fight will probably take more than a single kick. What's the total time it takes you to do 3 punchs compared to 3 kicks?

That guy didn't even have the decency to feel guilty for doing that to you? God... never underestimate people's capacity for apathy... sick...

One guy who did a circle as a hoax scraped some radium out of his watch and sprinkled it in the center so the investigators' geiger counter would go off... worked pretty well supposedly. (I don't know what sorts of watches have radium inside... little-known fact maybe?) What I read the other day said 80% are hoaxes and 20% can't be explained.

There were probably always greedy schools and crooked teachers. Nostalgia just has a way of filtering out the bad. I think that's what the last paragraph was hinting at. (not that I don't agree with the article... I just have to take everything-was-better-in-the-old-days stories with a grain of salt when the author wasn't even there )

Dog fights disgust me too. You know what sickens me even more? There are some people who train their dogs for those things who steal people's pets out of their backyards or respond to those free puppy ads in the classifieds just to give their dog something to tear apart to contribute to its bloodlust. Imagine one of them doing that to your pet... your extended family...

I can lick my elbow. Does that mean there's something wrong with me? Oh god, what if I don't make an echo when I quack either?!

I finished it on normal difficulty (wasn't really that hard... had Starcraft to train me beforehand), now I need to play it on hard. So far I get my butt whopped when I play custom games against a computer . It's like they took Starcraft and Diablo 2 and smooshed them together. Has a lot of things I wish Starcraft had. I've never played a Warcraft game before so I don't know how much it's grown since number 2. Good stuff... I don't really have any complaints about it.

I think I'd find out what the dinosaurs and their environments really looked like first-hand.

I don't know about that. I certainly wouldn't use a spinning/ariel kick now. Maybe if I were really really good at them. I used to be pretty good at them, but I never once used them sparring. If you're going against someone who knows how to take advantage of you, that's a relatively long time to have your back turned and your balance compromised... and if they have mercy on you and simply get out of the way (instead of planting your face into the ground), that's still a lot of energy you've just expended for little or no payback. But then there are people out there with kicks to the head that are so fast you couldn't block two of them in a row, so...

I think the problem here is with the original question. The term "mentally disabled" tells us nothing... how many different types of mental disabilities are there? Hundreds? How many levels of severity? How many of those disabilities even affect learning and comprehension and physical coordination? Like with any other student it would probably have to be decided case by case. I don't think any student, disabled or not, should be given a false sense of confidence regarding their abilities. That can get them killed. They shouldn't go into a situation they aren't prepared for thinking they are, no matter who they are. Whether black belt is an award given to people who are at that level of preparation, well, that depends on the martial art and the teacher of it as usual.

An Aikido dojo I visited once had a blood policy that you had to sign. It basically instructed people to immediately leave the mat if blood was spilled and there was a procedure for cleaning it up using a special kit. You had to sign it saying you agreed with it. I don't remember it requiring you to say if you had any blood diseases... but it might have.

In my system you have to have sensei title to teach, and usually sensei title isn't given until 3rd dan or so (sometimes at 2nd dan, but you have to really know your stuff). Of course no one could really stop you from opening a school on your own outside an organization. I guess schools under organizations might be more reliable?

This makes me appreciate my private instruction. My instructor knows what level I'm at just through our interaction during the lessons. In the 5 promotions I've recieved I've only gone through one actual test, and that didn't cost me anything besides the usual per-lesson fee.