This is way better than other pirate movies (except Matusalem of course). Also, it is way more realistic.

>> ^Tuco:
Why do some Asians wear those face masks? It is sooo creepy.
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
When I was in Taiwan, mopeds accounted for %80 of the traffic on the road, and they all wore these type of face masks.


Well, even here in Canada (Quebec to be precise) I've seen some ads in drugstores that remind people with the flu (or other airborne viruses) to put on a mask. No one actually does it though. Except maybe hospital personnel, and then only inside the hospital.

>> ^Schattdaddy:
An even bigger scandal than this is the 4 sumo wrestlers who were arrested and kicked out of the sport for tesing positive for THC. Combine a Japanese sport which is steeped in Shinto religion and a a bit of weed, now that is a scandal.


The irony here is that THC intoxication from primitive Shinto ritual offerings is probably what prompted the invention of sumo wrestling in the first place some millenia ago. I mean come on, look at the size of these guys! What do you think made them that way?

>> ^joedirt:
It is actually a warning to avoid these people who introduce ideas like clothing and that they have eaten from the tree of knowledge.

The story of Adam and Eve sounds to me more like an idiot's attempt at rationalizing year-round clothes wearing. Or more precisely, a rationalization of the shamefulness one feels when not wearing clothes in a society that wear clothes year-round. Clothes were at first a purely functional item whose meaning has been perverted by centuries of ignorance and unscientific thinking. And the same mechanism perverted the meaning of being naked, from simply "being naked" to "being sexual", because in a society where you wear clothes year-round for no apparent reason, the only time you're naked is when you fuck (or at least when you're being "intimate"). The Ancient Greeks, at least for the men, reversed the trend for a while until the desert monotheisms brought us back to the last ice age in terms of morality.

>> ^peggedbea:
the turning point came when i had to do a bladder study on 2 boys 2 weeks in a row, both were under 7, both had not been circumsized and both had chronic bladder and kidney infections. when i went to cath both of them their foreskins were filthy and crusted on, i dont think their parents have EVER pulled that stuff back and cleaned it properly.

WTF, are you an idiot? This only shows the mental damage American society (or whatever society you're in) has had from years of unwarranted circumcision : bad genital hygiene. The Chinese/Japanese/Indian/Latino-American/European are for the majority uncircumcised and lo, they wash their foreskin and don't get any more infections than the circumcised. And why would what other parents can't do influence your choice? Because they're so dumb they can't wash their child's foreskin you're going to lower yourself to their level and not wash your child's foreskin too? What if they jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?

The generalized correct reasoning here is this: don't wash foreskin = infection. Wash foreskin = no infection. Everything else is pure bullshit (because as we all know bovine feces is sterile).

i interviewed all my male friends both circumsized and uncircumsized, and one friend that had not been circumsized as a baby, but chose to be later on in life, everyone says circumsicion. so we did it.

And so you're a hypocrite and a sheeple. Not surprising coming from an idiot. Ask a Sunni if Shiites are bad, of course he'll say yes. Ask an evangelical church-goer if atheists are bad, of course he'll say yes. It still doesn't mean their opinion has any value outside of their little micro-society.

he was 6 hours old, they numbed him and gave him a chocolate sucker to suck on. nowadays they circumsize babies by putting this plastic bell over their penis, it cuts off circulation to the foreskin and it falls off in about a week. we had no problems and he doesnt seem to miss it and i dont feel bad about it now.

Glad the experience didn't give you PTSD.

foreskins have been shown to carry disease and a contributing factor the aids epidemic in africa, but still as nature intended.

False, false, false, and you're an idiot. The "study" that "proved" a "link" between foreskin and AIDS was a "study" that looked at the prevalence of AIDS vs the prevalence of circumcision, and ONLY in some regions of South Africa. More that 30% of South Africans have HIV. Correlation is NOT causation, not even link. Do some statistics: you'll be scared by how easy it is to find correlations between non random normally distributed sets, which includes nearly everything that has to do with human life.

its also interesting since ive grown up in a culture of male circumsicion, im intimidated by foreskins and prefer that stuff cut off if im gonna have sex with it, all my female friends feel the same way.

Yes it's interesting, but not the way you think it is. It's interesting in the same way the neurotic women Freud psychoanalyzed were interesting : they were mentally ill.

how do the men feel about their foreskins, or lack there of?

Coming from a now mostly circumcision free society, we do not feel much of anything about our foreskins unless they give us trouble, like any other part of our body.

also, to this day the smell of chocolate dumdums reminds me of the day my son was born.

Proof of your neurosis? You tell me.

Finally, I think the Ancient Greeks had it right : a man is not naked until his foreskin is fully retracted. Maybe circumcision is why so many Americans are still so prudish regarding nudity?

[citation needed]

>> ^Blurr:
Oh, and I completely agree with Bidouleroux.
What does your name mean?

"Bidou" is simply a nickname and "leroux" means "the red(head)".

This is pretty much exactly like religion vs. atheism, with religion being of course smoking.

>> ^Tofumar:
I love this performance. Oh, and if you go to youtube and look at the comments on this video, you'll get a nice example of what was parodied here on the other vid a few days ago: lots of people who probably can't even play cello critiquing this guy's interpretation.

lol you don't have to play a particular instrument to criticize a performance played on it, as long as you're not criticizing his technique but his interpretation. I do not like this guy's interpretation, it feels too fiddly, too fast, he emphasizes notes in weird places and he speeds up/slows down too fast and too much at once. But on the other hand, I love Phoebe Carrai's interpretation. Whatever if this Maisky is celebrated and won prizes, I don't care. Carrai's interpretation is better to my ear that his (she played for 10 years with a german historical ensemble devoted to 17th and 18th century music and it shows).

>> ^peggedbea:
also, nietzsche=extremely overrated. hegel=extremely underrated

Haha! While I can agree that Nietzsche is indeed overrated since his post-WWII revival, Hegel has been overrated since 1807. Not to mention the fact that every time Hegel spoke about science he was dead wrong. At least Nietzsche kept his mouth shut.

For example Gauss said that "Noah got drunk only one time, to become then, according to the Scriptures, a judicious man, while the insanities of Hegel in the Doctoral Dissertation, where he criticizes Newton and questions the utility of a search for new planets are still wisdom if one compares them with his later remarks."

And to answer HadouKen24, Nietzsche was very much influenced by Dotoevsky, naming him his only reference in psychology. Schopenhauer almost deified Goethe, especially his literary works. And Kierkegaard was pretty much unknown until the first German translations of his work in the 1910s.

>> ^soulmonarch:
Upvote Paulitics.
He may possibly be the only non-socialist representative currently in the United States government.

I think Karl Marx just rolled over in his grave again for the hundredth million time (he's been watching Faux news). You may have won a prize, but then you'd have to give half of it to your fellow human beings. Guess you'll just have to make do without it, huh? I mean, more stupidity isn't exactly what you need most right now anyway.

>> ^Nebosuke:
It seems like parkour tries to be a modern reinterpretation of gymnastics.

More like a reinterpretation of the obstacle course in an urban setting. If you're talking about doing gymnastics while running, then you're talking about "free running", which is not the same as parkour, "l'art du déplacement" (art of moving). Parkour is an art, as in martial art, whereas free running is "do whatever you want while running as long as it looks good". Parkour can and should look good too, but efficiency is paramount.

"ASU aikdio"

Maybe this very scene was the basis of Saotome-sensei's kata then! Wouldn't surprise me in the least. After all it was staged by one of Katori Shinto ryu's most distinguished proponents.

Saotome-sensei's bokken and jo are very different though from Saito-sensei's, who was taught the most by Osensei in bukiwaza matters. Osensei based most of his swordplay (he didn't teach any sword kata per se) on Kashima Shinto, in which style he briefly enrolled. The Kashima shrine is directly on the opposite side of the river from Katori shrine, so maybe Saotome-sensei saw fit to bring something from Katori in aikido too? But Saotome-sensei seemed at one time to follow Kashima Shinto (viz. the bokken shape)... Anyways, Katori and Kashima are like cousin-ryu so the basics remain the same.

"You should relax your wrists."

Well, it's not because is wrist is bent that it's tense. Apply nikyo ura to your own wrist (like we do in warming-up) or have it applied to you by someone else. Your wrist is bent but still your keep your wrist relaxed, or at least you should to avoid injury. But here again, in waki kamae the point is moot since you will need to change your grip before striking, even if you strike from below.

"And every kumitachi can be done differently from Dojo to Dojo depending on the teachers."

Yes I know full well, hence the question. It's simply that I do not practice ASU kata, only Iwama (I practiced ASU nito at two seminars but that's it).

First, Kumi Tachi ni of what style? Aikido? Then what style of aikido?

Second, it's not a habit it's called a style. How you hold your sword in waki kamae (that's the usual name, gedan hasso is rarely used and its used mostly in aikido circles) is moot anyway since its not a striking stance but a waiting and inviting stance, i.e. you have to take another stance before striking, even if only for an instant. Here he switches to jodan before striking the ronin down. Yoshio Sugino of Katori Shinto Ryu was swordplay instructor so I do not think the left hand making an L is a mistake, though this doesn't seem to be the waki kamae of Katori Shinto.

Third, the ronin's stance is jodan, not hasso. It's not a foolish stance, but of course the ronin is not very good at it.

Fourth, it's called aiuchi. And it's not like he held back with the bokken. It's just that a bokken doesn't cut like a katana, so you have to give a blunt hit to show you touched the other guy. If Kyuzo had pulled back like he did the second time it would have looked as if they had both missed each other. Pulling back and missing by inches is how you'd practice the kata with friends, but this was a match.

Still, a great movie and a great sequence so upvote from me too.

>> ^chilaxe:
The claims that non-collusive sparring can't be done using Aikido without hurting the opponent too badly can be tested easily against a mixed martial artist willing to risk broken arms, wrists, fingers etc. (he won't think it's much of a risk). I believe this issue is only going to grow, as mixed martial arts is growing rapidly, with viewership of the monthly UFC events eclipsing boxing and sometimes even baseball viewership among the under 40 generation.

This would be ridiculous, because aikido is practiced as a defensive art. Also see my points below. As an anecdote, there was such a duel arranged between one of Osensei's student and an american judo champion for a film on aikido in the 1960's. The judo guy was told not to attack since aikido was a defensive art. So he didn't. But the aikido representative (Akira Tohei), feinted an attack to create an opening and finally got the much bigger American judo guy on the ground. Still afterwards he was scolded by Osensei who said "You should have waited for an attack no matter what!". This is to say that there is no point in fighting if it's not to defend your life (or honor, since for the old Japanese the two are equal).


Isn't it a good cause to encourage Aikido to back up its claims, or to utilize more realistic sparring? UFC champs become millionaires, so there does seem to be ample incentive to participate.

Japanese bushi (samurai) did not participate in "realistic sparring" with their jujutsu techniques, yet the best of them could have probably killed any UFC champ. Why? Because they were ready to die at anytime. At that level, an untrained and sloppy but sudden and unexpected eye poke, for example, can become a lethal tool.

In my eyes, Judo and MMA competitions are much more dance-like than aikido practice. They're "freeform" dances. In judo and MMA you both have freedom from kata, but you lose that freedom because of 1) rules and 2) the "fair duel" setup, i.e. two guys that know when they will be fighting each other and even sometimes know what techniques the other favors. Aikido on the contrary doesn't require a "fair duel" situation to be effective. In fact, many (dan level) techniques are done with two or three opponents. We also practice with 4 or more opponents to make sure our techniques can flow instinctively under pressure. Karate still has kata with many opponent situation but most student don't even know they're fighting more than one "shadow" opponent in their kata. In comparison, in aikido we practice our "kata" (techniques) with a partner. This is because jujutsu is a skin-to-skin contact art, so you have to train your somatic sensations, up to being able to execute a technique in full darkness (this is practiced in many dojo in fact).

On the other hand, what is difficult with both competition and kata practice is to understand that in a non-comptetition or non-practice situation, you do not have to conform to kata or techniques. You execute them when the occasion presents itself, otherwise you try to create, in the heat of the moment, such an occasion (with atemi or some other distraction). In the end, the best teachers are real situations: if you really want to know if you're ready, go catch some criminals or kill some terrorists.

P.S. I know true judo (as done by Kano and Mifune for example) and many of the arts practiced in MMA by themselves don't need the "fair duel" setup to be effective, but the way they train for competitions makes it so (in fact Gracie jujutsu was made for fair duels. That's how they became famous in Brazil, by dueling. Saying that BJJ is good on the street is like saying a rapier is good on a battlefield: complete nonsense).