2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

judo, not karate. just sayin

And a related, prior sift http://videosift.com/video/Karate-Kid-video-directed-by-Johnny-from-the-movie

So his diamond is what, 0.0001 karat?

I haven't seen a crane technique fail this badly since Karate Kid II.

Anyone else thinks that World War Z was a bad book?
For me, Brooks tries to give a serious global perspective of a zombie apocalypse, but his portrayal of different cultures and real world geopolitical forces falls flat.
I know it's pointless complaining about a lack of realism in a novel about zombies, but it ruins my immersion when the author seems to get his impression of the world from American news and the Karate Kid.

You're right. I was trying to figure out if the garments in the back right corner were Karate or Klan.>> ^nomino:

I love how orchestrated the background is. It's as if someone would actually have a room as ridiculous as this one. It's full of successful and patriotic imagery that the electorate subconsciously processes. I would have greatly enjoyed being in the meeting where they argued on what should be behind these two shills.

I am by no means a cutty stabby person, but after this I looked around a bit. This is basically kendo: ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMxlqayAwG8&feature=related ) and you are right, it doesn't look like this at all.
What these guys are doing is called kenjutsu ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIxt3Zd6K0k ) which seems to be a whole other thing (kinda like comparing judo to karate). When you check out more of that kenjutsu stuff it all of a sudden looks a lot more "realistic".

Also, I am pretty sure that standing with your guard completely down and just moving your shoulders is probably not a valid sword fighting technique, but maybe this guy is just so bad-ass he doesn't care.

The stances employed according to far more geeky interweb friends is something like "Tamiya-ryu" or "Jigen-ryu" (somewhere between the late 15th and 16th century) and it actually involves mostly diagonal/vertical slices to the torso to try and kill your opponent in one blow. The goal was pretty much always to hit the enemy's throat and failing that slice the opponent in an up to down diagonal motion while denying your opponent to do the same.

This video confirms what I already suspected.

Back in high school me and a bunch of other students who got high enough PSAT scores got invited to go down to the Naval Academy in Annapolis to experience a weekend orientation of the academy. I bunked with a guy from Texas who was a black belt in karate. At the time I was really into Tae Kwon Do and we got to talking about martial arts in general. One of the other guys in our room asked us how to deal with an attacker with a knife and the karate guy without pause answers, "Run."

Everyone laughed until he lifted up his shirt and showed us this ugly red scar that goes from one side of his belly to the other. Apparently, some guy had talked trash to him out on the street one day and instead of walking away he faced off against the guy. The knife came out so fast he said he never saw it coming. He got hella lucky in that the slash wasn't deep enough to hit his internal organs and that the other dude just took off running after getting the one hit in, but he was still bleeding everywhere. Some other people nearby called an ambulance and got the kid to the hospital.

Years later, my brother and I got into mixed-martial arts and used to practice defending against knife attacks. We'd wear cheap white clothing and used red markers to simulate the knife. What we learned really quickly is that even if you successfully disarmed the simulated attacker, when you looked down you had probably been cut in at least 3 different places during the attempt.

So I agree with everything in this video. Someone comes at you with a knife, you're not necessarily fucked but you need to accept that in all likelihood you're going to get cut... and that even if you succeed in incapacitating the attacker there's still a good chance you'll bleed out from the cuts you took in the process before medical attention arrives.

Cabaret. Bob Fosse's Cabaret.


In reply to this comment by Yogi:
I never knew who the hell Liza Minelli was or cared. I know her from Arrested Development doing an amazing job. I kinda wish she was only famous for that.

>> ^ant:

Kareem Abdul Jabbar is a vampire!
It is weird to see him doing karate. He should ues basketballs or something as weapons!
Let's see Lakers' Kobe do this.


I believe he was a student of Lee's.
Even though I don't study Jeet Kun Do, I'm a big fan of Lee's philosophy in martial arts, especially the whole "be water" concept.

>> ^AeroMechanical:

... he would have karate chopped it into submission.


Kirk was an expert karate chopper. Could Picard karate chop? Didn't think so!

Oh man, no, no no no no. Picard is okay and all, but Kirk is where it's at. Picard, with all his 90's extreme political correctness, and bringing his therapist along with him wherever he goes, isn't half the man Kirk is. Kirk would have just made eyes at that blobby crystal thing, invited it over for cocktails and then put the whole matter to rest later on in his quarters. And if that didn't work, he would have karate chopped it into submission.