Real Work Conversation: Casillero

Context: we're looking at a picture of a label on a wine bottle.

Ex-Minion: "Casillero del Diablo. What's 'Casillero' mean?"

Me: "Cask, maybe? Something like that?"

I consult the All-Knowing Google.

Me: "Ah, here we go. According to the manufacturer, it means 'cellar.' So, Cellar Of The Devil, or something like that. Interesting, though, it looks like current dictionaries define it as a desk, or locker. But yeah, that's probably an older usage - like 'locker' can mean 'store room', too, in English."

Ex-Minion: "The Devil's Wine Cellar."

Me (holding a fist up dramatically): "And now, from the Devil's Rec Room...!"

Ex-Minion: "That sounds scary."

My Boss: "That sounds like a game show."

Morality and Ecclesiology

This - this, right here - is exactly why I read Slacktivist. Insight, perspective, empathy, and the firm resolve to call people out when they are acting badly - and explain, in very clear terms, exactly why he thinks they're acting badly: these are things I admire.

But again, this is not the Catholic Church attacking the victims. Those victims, by definition, are the church. This is Dolan, Donohue and the bishops attacking the church.

Read the whole thing.

Filler - Unfinished Projects

I have absolutely nothing to post this morning. (Work has eaten my writing time.) I haven't done any more character sketches, and can't spare the time to do one now; I haven't written enough of the next bit of Apocalypse River to put it up; the Mad Scientist has been busy, and the Deranged Cultist still hasn't reappeared in consensus reality; and I'm fresh out of random topics to ramble about.

So this is basically an open thread. What projects would you like to be working on, if you had more time/energy/money? Alternatively, what's keeping you busy these days?

I could look dramatic, too...

We have a television in the server room. (There are actual work-related reasons for this.) When not needed for anything else, which is most of the time, it's set to the Weather Channel. That's pretty bland fare, for the most part.

Recently, though, I've been seeing advertisements for shows like Ice Pilots and Turbine Cowboys. And if Reality TV has taught us anything, it's that successful shows have a sort of trickle down effect. (This is basically a result of producers saying things like, "This show made money. How many ways can we repackage the basic concept before the whole trend collapses under the weight of its own silliness?")

So now I'm wondering just how long it will be before someone shows up to make my own career look like a marvel of courage and ingenuity in the face of extreme danger. "Knights of the Server Room: you've never seen I.T. like this before. Premiering this fall on The Learning Channel." The tag line would be accompanied by a picture of someone in full climbing harness, suspended by a pulley from the ceiling, running network cables on the back of a thirty-foot-tall server rack.

What would your job sound like if it were ridiculously overdramatized for a Reality TV program?

Late edit: Apparently Cracked noticed the same pattern back in January...

Combat Theory 01: armed and unarmed

In the comments on the post about lightsaber battles, rejiquar asked if there were good beginning resources for writing and/or drawing believable combat scenes. I offered a partial answer there, but since this is a topic that plays to two of my particular interests - writing and martial arts - I thought I'd throw out some thoughts here. This might become a regular series, if it holds my interest and/or if enough of my readers find it interesting, so feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Obviously, I'm not going to be discussing self-defense in anything other than general terms, here. If you want to learn how to defend yourself, you need to find a competent instructor and spend some time training. Instead, I want to look at some elements of combat theory that might be helpful if you want to write medieval/fantasy fight scenes.

So, for starters, let's look at some of the differences between armed and unarmed combat.

First of all: a weapon, any weapon, is a huge advantage. Melee weapons - anything from a knife to a spear - offer a huge advantage in reach, leverage, and damage. With a weapon, you can hit from farther away; you can hit harder, and the edge of a blade (or even just a piece of wood) will deliver the force better than an empty hand or a foot ever will. Ranged weapons take this principle a step further, allowing you injure an opponent while staying well and truly out of his reach - unless he has a ranged weapon of his own, of course. The ideal situation is to have a weapon with enough reach that you can strike your opponent while he's still too far away to strike you.

The brings up one of the very nice things about using weapons: they offer quite a bit of gender equality. A five-foot-tall woman, facing off in unarmed combat against a man who's six-foot-four and twice her mass, is at a serious disadvantage. He has better reach, more weight, and almost certainly more muscle. He can hit her from farther away, and do a lot more damage. And if they move to a grappling situation, he can use his weight against her, too.

Put knives in their hands, though, and suddenly muscle and weight make a lot less difference. With a blade, it doesn't matter so much how hard you hit; it's much more important if you hit, and where you hit. So now the man still has an advantage in reach, but the difference in muscle now makes very little difference.

Now put swords in their hands, instead of knives. The man in this scenario still has more reach, but with each of them holding three feet of sharpened steel, the difference in reach is relatively slight and unimportant. It's still there, but it doesn't matter anywhere near as much. At this point it's mostly technique: skill versus skill.

Change them to using spears, and now there's essentially no difference in reach or ability to inflict damage. As long as nobody is too weak to use the weapon (which shouldn't be the case for reasonably able-bodied adults), the differences in strength and reach are unimportant, and the difference in weight can actually be a disadvantage for the heavier person. (It makes him less maneuverable.)

This also brings up another point: in unarmed combat, it's possible to absorb a blow from your opponent in order to deliver a more powerful blow of your own. I've heard this described as "sacrificing a pawn to capture a queen". With weapons of any sort, it really doesn't work that way. Weapons do so much more damage (and remember, antibiotics are a very new invention, historically speaking) that this sort of trick essentially doesn't work. Sure, you can take a blow to the leg in order to hit your opponent's head - but with any sort of weapons, you're still in real danger of having your leg disabled, not to mention death from blood loss or infection. At the very least, you've rendered yourself unfit for any further fighting until you recover.

From a fighting and/or self-defense perspective, weapons are basically always an advantage.

Oh, one other thought on armed and unarmed combat: there's more stylistic variety in unarmed combat. Some of that has to do with context. A style developed for men fighting in full plate armor is going to look very different from a style designed to fend off multiple unarmored opponents. But a lot of it is just difference in emphasis and body types.

With weapons, on the other hand, there's a certain sort of parallel evolution. There are only so many ways that a blade of a particular weight, shape, and balance can be used by a human body. So you find that katana techniques (designed for use with, basically, a two-handed saber) also show up, historically, in techniques for the Swiss two-handed saber. It's not because one style borrowed from the other; it's because there are only so many effective ways to use a blade of that approximate size and shape.

The Joys of Parenting

We have two boys. They're about four years apart. Firstborn will be turning six in June (and I assume that this surreal sense of How Did He Get That Old??? will only get worse from here on out). Secondborn will be turning two in about three weeks.

I am incredibly proud of these boys. They are bright, inquisitive, kind... and very, very active. But hey, I didn't really want to go to sleep at night anyway. Or keep anything delicate anywhere in our house. So it's all good, really.

Firstborn is currently in Kindergarten. He has learned to read, and his reading skills (and vocabulary, etc.) are growing by leaps and bounds. He's still doing gymnastics, and he's started climbing the fence in our back yard. Oh, and jumping off the fence in our back yard. He's also starting to play with his younger brother - Secondborn is just old enough for that, now.

Secondborn is learning to talk. He has a pretty good vocabulary - though offhand, I have no idea how many words he knows - and routinely constructs two-word sentences. He's also started asking "What?" and "Why?" fairly frequently. He's still blond, which means he picked up recessive genes from both his parents - or else the Faeries swapped our dark-haired child for a blond changeling, somehow. He can walk, run, climb, and jump - all with surprising skill. And he gets into everything.

I've mentioned before that parenting is a huge job, which essentially never ends, and which requires a massive investment of time, energy, and attention. It is not for everybody. Right now, though, I just want to talk about why I love doing it - me, myself, personally.

So join me below the fold, where I can continue bragging with pics and video:

A Gun Owner on "Stand Your Ground"

A Bookish Beemer writes:

I don’t like “stand your ground” laws. I understand the sentiment–if I have the right to be in a space, I also have the right to be there and be safe. I have the right to be free from harm, from being a victim of a crime. I have the right to defend myself.

I have the right to defend myself.

That is why I don’t like “stand your ground” laws. I already have the right to defend myself.

Read the whole thing. Please.