Cobb

Martial Education Update - Summer 2017

Several years ago I figured out that there was a class of knowledge that I was overly dependent on Hollywood and TV for my instruction. Today, not so much. You can check the channel for details under Martial Ed. Here's an update.

I have begun to take lessons in street combat. There's not a more pleasant way to name it. I could call it martial arts, but I have come to a finer grained set of distinctions in the ways of fighting. For some time this area of expertise could basically be called 'krava maga', which I first encountered in NYC two decades ago. The magic of Krav Maga is that it's 'martial arts' plus guns, which is to say beyond 'this is the stuff they teach the IDF' it is not so much a sport, and not so much 'self-defense' as it is a method of being dangerous to those who would harm you in a no-holds-barred situation. I have entertained some brief fancies around sword canes and small knives hung around my neck. At one time I thought about enrolling in an edged weapons class at the [expensive] Emerson Training Center. In the end, I pick TaeKwanDo for a number of decent reasons. That lasted a good three months then my schedule changed. I couldn't remember the dance steps, but when I got a chance to do the Hapkido parts, I think I was pretty good. In fact, I'm sure that I was.

I missed the aspects of grappling and using the kinds of strengths that served me as a skinny kid. I've always had an excellent sense of balance and I did well in Judo the few times I did that when I went to day camp as a kid. I wore glasses, so I was never good at boxing, so I rushed my opponents and wangled them to the ground. I always felt comfortable with ground fighting. But I was lucky and never really had to fight that much once I turned 17. Only once have I been hit in the face since then - with some guy who thought he could jack me. Long story short, he hit me with a sucker punch and ran away. I know I can take a punch, but it has been a long time. 

My life ideals lead me directly to Aikido and for a long time I have regretted not finding the right instructor. But all of the people I found around here in Southern Cal were more like ballet instructors than soldiers. I didn't and still don't want to hear about Eastern philosophies of harmony and balance. I simply want to become expert in understanding how to move my body and move other people's bodies under duress. 

Somewhere in Palos Verdes is a warrior in Hapkido. I need to see if he still works at that park. That's the guy I want to be. Well, I want to know some of what he knows. In the meantime, I have found a warrior who lives a few blocks from me, and I am taking private instruction. In addition, I have rejoined my gym and have lost about 10 pounds from this year's peak. I have 20 more pounds to go to reach what I think ought to me optimum - around 190 pounds. Then maybe I can really improve my aerobic endurance. 

Very much like the first time I started my circuit training, getting into what I'm learning now is painful. It's good to get hit. It reminds you of what's likely to happen. I'm pretty sure that I can keep my cool, and I hope that I start learning the paths. What I am learning is something specific to my arc which is multifold. Call it modified street Kali. It's CQ with sticks and edged weapons with some specialization for people who move slow, ie older guys like myself. I'm not so slow now, but in five years I may be. So I've got to learn something that will serve me into my 60s, not just give me the satisfaction that I can kick ass now. So I am learning to flow like water, but with the understanding that if I do not, then it's a fight.

"Then it's a fight" is something my instructor says when we find an opening in our techniques. So we started last week trying to adapt disarming techniques that we learned from a 1940s era video of the Canadian Army. As we watched, it looked goofy. As we put it to the test, the foot placements actually made sense. When you're trying to wrestle a bayonetted rifle from an opponent, you have to do it right the first time, or then it's a fight, meaning all logic flies out the window and you're situational mastery goes to zero. What's important that I'm learning is that you actually have to work against force, which is what 'martial arts' ballet does not do. You cannot perfect a combat technique without learning painfully what can go wrong. So there's definitely a fear factor in play here. 

I would note that I'm finding a couple sources to be very instructive. One is Doug Marcaida. The other is MindSmash. 

The New Distributed World

When my daughter returned from Thailand, she reminded me of how much people elsewhere in the world listen to American music. I don't think I realized how true that is until I saw these two videos.

Somedays I wonder what can and cannot be crowdsourced. Talent can. But there is going to have to be a revolution in marketing. Digital marketing is probably still in '1.0'. As we perfect security and get a lot better at opting in and opting out, it will be interesting to see how people deal with the mainstream, or if anything like 'the mainstream' will survive as we know it.

Perhaps we will not need brokers, or perhaps those brokers will be indicated to us as well. Fascinating times. Long live the broadcast.

1970s SoCal Street Culture - DogTown, Crenshaw, Palisades & Hollywood

Thinking of my recent purchase of DogTown & Z-Boys I recall my participation in sports at the very beginnings of extreme sports in the mid 70s Los Angeles. I'm doing a lot more recording of myself these days following what I've read by Kevin Kelly. I do think this new global augmentation of human intelligence is inevitable. So I'm prepared to share more. Recently, as I mentioned on Facebook, I'm thinking a lot about that period in my life as a young teen with the LA County Junior Lifeguard (JG) program in the summer of 75.  I start there and go all over the map. I used first names of people I suspect will still be alive. Be patient. This starts off slow then gets good.

I would like to correct a couple things in this, as I recall that I may have got a timeline a bit mixed up. The Hollywood Roller Rink was opened and in its heyday years before urethane wheels came along for roller skates. So first was Hollywood before I finished high school (in 78) I must have been 13 or even 12 when I used to go there. Reseda, Flippers then Starlight then World on Wheels at Midtown were all after 1979.

• Related:
• Skateboard Christmas
• The Return of Dogtown
• Famous Kids from the GDZs

Joots

"So come. Take me by the hand. We'll leave this troubled land. I know we can."
-- Maurice White, 1976

Somewhere around 1982 I encountered this geek word. I think it was coined by D.R. Hofstadter. It rhymes with puts. It's a verb used like "joots the system".  It basically is the action taken when one begins to 'think outside of the box'. Now looking towards Google, which I tend to do less in order to be close to my own thoughts on any matter, I see that it actually was Hofstadter and it is an acronym for 'jumping out of the system'. 

From those days it became second nature for me to investigate the inconsistencies at the border conditions of all systems. I have since then been automatically drawn to what I called 'the social implications of Goedel's Incompleteness Theorum'. No organization or system of organization of human beings can be complete and consistent. That means all organizational policy will either use lies to accomplish all of their goals or will be truthful but be unable to meet all of their goals, or they will be truthful and meet all of their goals but only by using external resources not bound by the policy of the organization (which would have to be deniable). In retrospect, perhaps it was inevitable that I became a consultant, that unbounded external resource. 

These days I am a bit restless to have more power, and on some days I think about why I wasn't more persistent in being an asshole in my 30s pursuing BMW perfection and riches. The answer is simple. As soon as I became a father, I knew I had to be a father. I am not sure, having not entertained these thoughts very often, if I am more desirous of autonomy or power. In some ways they seem to be one in the same, given that there are not many things I am so insistent my orders provide for society. I might get power and take its benefits for the freedom it gives me not to be bound by work rules. Or I might take autonomy for the same reason. Karma chameleon. I come and go. I guess that's the point. I want freedom to come and go as I please. I think of liberation geographically because my mind is already free.

Yesterday I drove around in circles looking for a parking space for Venice Beach. I'm sure I found the most convenient and expensive in anticipation of an upcoming meeting of the Obscura Society. I bought a t-shrt and CD from the rollerblading guitarist Harry Perry. He has been there since the 70s. We talked for a minute and than he sang me a song. He's not as good as he used to be. I walked out past the ruins of the Venice Pavillion to the Breakwater Station where I was Junior Guard in the summer of 1975. I talked to the lifeguards about the good old days. They tell me that hazing has been banned from all of the JG programs. Venice' chaos is orderly these days. It's not dangerous, it's market driven. The skaters have a skate park. The henna tattoo artists are all licensed. But the junk food is still as bad. I stayed away from it. Somebody left their iPhone on the benches near the paddle tennis courts. I gave it to the man who ran the t-shirt shop next door. In 150 minutes I saw maybe two women whom I might consider actually attractive. This was my place when I was a confused teen, when I used to perform in public as a tumbler - not for the coins like the shirtless athletes now at the boardwalk with their barker's megaphone and script, but like a skateboard kid. I get it. I understand the dynamic of going to Venice Beach to make a spectacle of yourself. I used to wonder why nobody who actually knew how the world worked didn't set up a booth with encyclopedias next to the fortune tellers and other cranks. This place would be far too lonely for truth and reason. You don't teach at a circus.

Every day I watch videos about fast cars. I am currently in the middle of overthinking my immanent purchase of a Porsche. I still haven't decided between a 911 with its classic lines and pedigree, or the Cayman with its mid-engine and sleek profile. What's not in question is my desire to be apart from the crowd, to be moving even while standing still. To imply my impermanence here in this moment in this position in this stance is to show my belonging to a higher echelon. In this material world there are complexities that deliver without question. Mash on the gas and the Porsche goes, not just straight but around the curves and dips in life. Then again, so does my truck. It doesn't need pavement. It doesn't need smoothness. It doesn't need pampering. I am very hesitant to trade one for the other. I want both. Some days I want the speed more. Other days I want the tough more. I always want to drive. The very first record I bought as a teen was a 45 by Earth Wind and Fire. Getaway. 

Everyone has their promised land. In urban dreams, they try to leap tall buildings in a single bound. This is fantasy. People have forgotten how to dream about freedom. They don't see economies. They don't understand the powers they seek. They wish to trade places, every pauper has his imagined prince. The man on Virginia Avenue wants to be on Park Place, completely ignoring the third dimension where god like hands grab green houses and orange bills from the bank. Put on your hoodie, turn up the bass, walk in step to the beat on the sidewalk mean mug but are your shoes made for hiking?

All systems fail. All systems are incomplete or inconsistent. Freedom = (adaptability + vision at the edge cases)^mobility. 

Beginning Lordship

On my way to becoming what I want to be, something of a kickass man in full, I have discovered that it's more difficult for me to actually reign in my ambition. I have been telling people for the past five years that I am not anti-social, that I am anti-bullshit. But perhaps in fact I am anti-social in the way that is a necessity for people of substance who must actually walk the walk on a daily basis. For example, when I learned how to shoot pistols a few years ago, suddenly a huge portion of television and movie drama became unwatchable. I realized that I had been engaged in fanciful thinking about guns for the entire time that I never took the opportunity to stop being so ignorant and get some hands on experience. The more things one does of this nature, the more anti-social one is tempted to become as our society requires a certain discretion in the treatment of naifs. I approach all this with some caution, of course. As excited as I get to be the man on that wall, I can't always be so sure deep down in people's hearts that they want me on that wall. Naifs will deny that they need me on that wall. They think they can avoid the Morlocks simply by not driving through certain neighborhoods. Meh. Enough with the preface.

The last time I spent the winter in Philadelphia I was at the end of a particular career and I wrote the Way of the Servant. It detailed what i thought and still think should be the model of work done in my industry, that of business intelligence, and for that matter most of end-user computing and all programming that serves domain-specific human decision making. What you program into AIs is up to you, but is also for another discussion. To recap: 

Ambition

• Newbie
• Apprentice
• Journeyman
• Hotshot

Mastery

• Guru
• Goto

Power

• Lord
• Demiurge
• Primary

Now if all of this sounds a bit feudal to you, you would be correct. I could go into it but here's the basic premise. Work is not democratic, and if it is to be meritocratic on a human scale (as opposed to a global scale) then hierarchies are inevitable. As much as I like decentralized power, I do not concede for a moment that children are equals to their parents or that wisdom does not accumulate with age. At some point Americans may choose to do away with the SAT and grade points and let everyone go to college for free, but for the time being be aware that very strict hierarchies are in place in our society that nobody finds particularly controversial.

Moreover there are certain tasks in human affairs that require command and control, because there are certain situations that arise that almost nobody wants to initiate. We must be persuaded, the majority of us, to engage in distasteful or dangerous work. For areas where we are unsure or ignorant or otherwise unmotivated we need the confidence that command gives. For such matters, stating the obvious, leadership is necessary.

Having become the Goto, and having fooled around being Guru once upon a time, I decided to become a Lord. That was in 2007. It didn't work out. There wasn't quite a cultural fit. I was a perfectionist, they were hustlers. I required clarity, they could wing it. I made promises my boss couldn't cash, and he expected me to figure out a way to get away with it. Uncomfortable, and ultimately unprofitable for the both of us. That seems so long ago I can't even remember, without the aid of an old resume, to tell you what happened next. But what I have been doing for the past 6 years has been another adventure altogether.

In that time, I went through an entirely new cycle of Apprenticeship and Journeyman's work in open source, cloud and devops work. Same trajectory, completely new toolset, and under the kind of direction I had never had in my entire career, a truly brilliant technical mind. But that cycle has come to a close and now I am ascending once again to work on a more Lordly level. Plus I've done a bit of Demiurgery. Now people hew to my rules. It's a new rhythm I'm beginning to get used to. I expect to wean myself, in due time, from all roles of ambition and mastery. I do have enough domain knowledge even though the world keeps spinning.

On the horizon are yet another set of interesting technologies associated with distributed non-trusted databases. Yes that old blockchain. I have decided that my angle will be simply that there are centralized fiat trusted databases and decentralized databases. The literature says that they can handle a righteously fast transaction volume. Nobody fully understands what the applications of all that will be. I hope to be able to swoop down from a 10,000 foot level and perch on a reasonably high position of command and control when all this matures. In the meantime, I will continue to be a data architect's best manager. Stay tuned.

Is Visualization Smart or Dumb?

I hate emoticons, but I'm starting to use them with greater frequency.

My gut tells me that visual communications of this sort are dumbing down literacy, and I'm trying to communicate that with regularity by expressing my distaste. But there is a possibility that there may be some good to come of visual communications of a sort. I'm just not convinced that it will be done right.

When I think of visualization I understand first and foremost that when the motion picture was invented, its originators considered it to be an extraordinarily powerful medium for the purposes of instruction. Talking about how to plant a row of corn could never compete with showing a film of a farmer doing this with close-ups of his hands in the soil. Similarly, today we are regaled with the promise of virtual reality goggles with augmentation that can show a repairman at a remote location how to fix a piece of equipment he's never seen before. But television has also shown people how Lucille Ball might fake a commercial for Vitameatavegimin and all sorts of things that we've never seen before.

I will revisit this subject in due time. I am recalibrating my thoughts having completed Kevin Kelly's latest book.

Race Credits

I've stumbled upon a new way to confound and mock wishful thinkers. This in the dimension of race. It began with a stab at the definition of 'white privilege' which I consider to be presumptuous, ill-defined and mostly insignificant. 

In an attempt to monetize the benefits of inherited white privilege, someone suggested that the average income differential by race was indicative of the historical boon. An average white woman, by dint of this boon would therefore realize an annual salary of 22,000 whereas the average black woman would only receive an annual salary of 20,000. Therefor the white woman owes the black woman 1,000 if equality were to be achieved. 

However it is also part of this conventional wisdom that poor Muslim immigrants are now denied the opportunity to participate in the American economy by dint of a racist policy. Well, then let's let them in, goes the rationale. The effect however would be that these penniless people would be lumped in with the blacks and then reduce their annual salaries by another 1,000. Doesn't that increase white privilege? 

This mind teaser would force someone as bound to logic such as I am to investigate other conundrums of white privilege and racism as defined by those seeking a way out. Those seeking a way out? Don't I mean Whites? Well, I guess I do. Part of the engagement with the dilemma of white privilege involves some way of Whites weaseling their way out of it. Of course they do so by the basic presumption that they are indeed White and what they do as Whites matters. So they try to figure something out. Something that can finally allow the White race to sleep at night. Something must be found to purify the evil historical deeds of the Whites. What Whites need now, more than ever, is White purity.

Do you hear me chuckling?

Well, despite the fact that I have recently picked up a new commenter who believes it is his sacred black duty to make sure that I do not pollute myself with the agendas of the alt-right and various forces of white supremacy, I have decided to go ahead and speak up again on the tedious subject of race. I mean, it was a slam dunk. And to that end, I offer the following syllogism straight outta Facebook. The subject was two Asian stars of Hawaii-50, the rebooted TV show, quit for not getting paid. Predictably this is now a 'teachable moment' for the devotees of white privilege. 

What if Asians were actually such people who didn't need to watch TV? What if Whites were such a people who did need to watch TV? Then the presence of Asians on TV would be beneficial to Whites. The absence of Asians on TV would be detrimental to Whites.

Therefore it would be in the White interest to have Asians on TV.

The question therefore becomes whether or not Asians find it in their own interests to serve the White interests in consuming Asians on TV. And that depends upon whether the Asians on TV are portrayed as Asians serving the interests of Asians.

Thus if Asian and White interests are generally mutually exclusive, then the sole benefit of Asians on TV to Asians would be Asians serving Asian interests. Let's say that interest is teaching Asian language. Since that would be a mutually exclusive interest, it has to be measured against the White interest of having Asians on TV, meaning basically Asians on TV doing all things only a few of which actually serve Asian interests.

Thus an equilibrium is created in which the benefits to Whites is significant in that Whites can additionally claim to serve Asian interests (subservient to the White interest in TV). In other words, on the whole it's good TV which serves the White interest.

If on the other hand Whites and Asians both have the same interests in TV, then it doesn't matter how Whites are portrayed and it doesn't matter how Asians are portrayed. All that matters are the interests of TV, which means getting paid. In which case it doesn't matter the race of people who are getting rewards or those who are getting screwed.

Moral of the story. Don't fight the house.
__

However, if you choose to represent racial interests in any area of endeavor and choose to suggest that whatever happens to one member of a race is of significance to that race, then you have a great deal of accounting to do of interest by race.

I would suggest that this interest has been generated in Whites who desire to signify their morality as Whites to others who are not White. In other words, Whites are making themselves Whiter by investing in a new theory of race. Like carbon credits, this is a new economy of race credits. It has far less accountability than Jim Crow. And yet it is more pervasive. And it is generating a raft of strange new behaviors as Whites think up different methods to signal to each other that they are more racially sensitive than ever before in the history of mankind. Something they perceive to be actually simple, given the racial theory of historical White behavior.

It's all rather pathetic.

 

We're in a race bubble. Everybody seems to be an expert on what is and what is not racist. Which means of course that nobody really knows for sure, but they're trying. Well, you can't be mad at people for trying. But you'd think they'd be a little bit smarter about it. Actually more robust about it, or simply less fragile about it. Their accounting is completely random and nobody is really keeping an objective score, which is why so many charlatan claims are taken seriously. I'll keep my eyes on the math. As usual, when I bother to care.

But here's the serious question. What is at the end of white privilege? Is it a war that goes on forever? Does the white race get destroyed? When it drops below a measurable level do people continue being white? I ask this question as someone for whom the Civil Rights and Black Power movements were successful. All the major hurdles were beaten. If they weren't, then the fight for gays wouldn't have happened. Asian interests would not have been considered. It would still be 1968. There would still be no blacks on McDonald's commercials, stars in the mainstream or homeowners in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Black Americans would still be constrained to the same colleges and universities, still have their own sports leagues and barred from professional associations like the Bar or AMA. In other words, my generation had goalposts. For people I grew up with, it was the integration of Corporate America. For a lot of older folks I recall, it was the integration of the civil service. For others it was the integration of colleges and universities or suburban neighborhoods. Which is to say for most of us, it was some sort of integration. The elimination of white privilege, as it's defined, as something inherent to the white race, essentially means the elimination of the white race. But of course 'Whites' will decide how much white privilege is eliminated or purified. Everybody else who wants to speak up on behalf of a non-white race can complain forever. Then again that's the definition of race. You're either superior or sniveling.