Wednesday, January 23, 2008

NEWS: Chess great Bobby Fischer passed away last week

During my high school and college years...I was really really into chess...went so far as to compete in tournaments and represented my college along with my schoolmates. We, overall as a team, did fairly well...sadly I was second board...which meant I played the 2nd strongest player on the opposing team...it was a 4-man team. The first board was a super strong player, and the 3rd and 4th boards usually faced weaker opponents...it was pot luck who i got, sometimes they evened out the team in strength...most times, the opponents were top heavy and stacked their strongest on the first 2 boards and hoped one of the 3rd or 4th boards would win a game to take the match.

Despite the public perception of chess and chessplayers...I am glad I spent time to develop my chess game to a degree...it has helped me in thinking analytically at times and the one skill I have learned from chess is to be able to think ahead a few moves and the various permutations/combinations based off of my actions.

Bobby Fischer was an inspiration to me when I was into chess...the only U.S. World Champion (to date) and he was a genius. This post is for you Champ. May you rest in peace and meet the other world champions in heaven and show them you got game.

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Follows is the NY Times obit:
Bobby Fischer, Chess Master, Dies at 64

By BRUCE WEBER
Published: January 18, 2008

Bobby Fischer, the iconoclastic genius who was one of the greatest chess players the world has ever seen, has died, a close family friend, Gardar Sverrisson, confirmed Friday.

He was 64 and died on Thursday in a hospital in ReykjavĂ­k, Iceland. No cause of death was given but he had suffered for some time from an unspecified illness.

Mr. Sverrisson, who lived in the same apartment building in Reykjavik as Mr. Fischer, said: “He was a close family friend and we all miss him very much.”

Mr. Fischer, the most powerful American player in history, had moved to Iceland in 2005. He had emerged briefly in 1992 from a mysterious seclusion that had lasted two decades and defied an American ban on conducting business in wartorn Yugoslavia to play a $5 million match against his old nemesis, the Russian-born grandmaster Boris Spassky.

After he won handily, he dropped out of sight again, living alone. He avoided arrest on American charges over his Yugoslavia appearance and stayed in touch with his few friends in the United States by telephone, compelling them to keep his secrets or risk his rejection.

He lived in Budapest -- and possibly the Philippines and Switzerland -- and emerged now and then on radio stations in Iceland, Hungary and the Philippines to rant in increasingly belligerent terms against the United States and against Jews.

Mr. Fischer’s 1992 victory against Mr. Spassky was a sad reprise of his most glorious triumph. It was in summer 1972, in a match played in Reykjavik, that Mr. Fischer wrested the world championship from Mr. Spassky, becoming the first — and as yet only — American to win the title, which Russian-born players had held for more than four decades.

Mr. Fischer won with such brilliance and dramatic flair that he became an icon, an unassailable representative of greatness in the world of competitive games, much as Babe Ruth had been and Michael Jordan would become.

“It was Bobby Fischer who had, single-handedly, made the world recognize that chess on its highest level was as competitive as football, as thrilling as a duel to the death, as esthetically satisfying as a fine work of art, as intellectually demanding as any form of human activity,” wrote Harold C. Schonberg, who reported on the Reykjavik match for The New York Times, in his 1973 book, “Grandmasters of Chess.”

In July 2004, he was seized by the Japanese authorities when he tried to board a plane from Japan to Manila and was accused of trying to leave the country on an invalid passport. He was detained in prison for nine months while the various governments, as well as a staunch group of supporters in the chess world, tried to resolve the issue.

In 1999, in a series of telephone interviews he gave to a radio station in the Philippines, he rambled angrily and profanely about an international Jewish conspiracy, which he said was bent on destroying him personally and the world generally.

On Sept. 11, 2001, he told a radio talk-show host in Baguio, the Philippines, that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were ”wonderful news,” adding he was wishing for a scenario “where the country will be taken over by the military, they’ll close down all the synagogues, arrest all the Jews and secure hundreds of thousands of Jewish ringleaders.”

The world championship match against the elegant Spassky was an unforgettable spectacle, the cold war fought with chess pieces in an out-of-the-way place. Mr. Fischer’s characteristic petulance, loutishness and sense of outrage were the stuff of front page headlines all over the globe. Incensed by the conditions under which the match was to be played — he was particularly offended by the whirr of television cameras in the hall — he lost the first game, then forfeited the second and insisted the remaining games be played in an isolated room the size of a janitor’s closet. There, he roared back from what, in chess, is a sizable deficit, trouncing Mr. Spassky, 12 ½to 8 ½. (In championship chess, a victory is worth one point, a draw a half-point for each player.) In all, Mr. Fischer won 7 games, lost 3 (including the forfeit) and drew 11.

Through July and most of August, the attention of the world was riveted on the Spassky-Fischer match. Americans who didn’t know a Ruy Lopez from a Poisoned Pawn watched a hitherto unknown commentator named Shelby Lyman explain each game on public television. All this was Mr. Fischer’s doing. Bobby Fischer the rebel, the enfant-terrible, the tantrum-thrower, the uncompromising savage of the chess board, had captured the imagination of the world. Because of him, for the first time in the United States, the game, with all its arcana and intimations of nerdiness, was cool. And when it was over, he walked away with a winner’s purse of $250,000, a sum that staggered anyone ever associated with chess. When Mr. Spassky won the world championship, his prize was $1,400.

Mr. Fischer’s victory was widely seen as a symbolic triumph for Democracy over Communism, and it turned the new champion into an unlikely American hero. He was invited to the White House by President Richard M. Nixon, interviewed on television, hounded by journalists, wooed unsuccessfully by commercial interests. Sales of chess sets skyrocketed; so did fees for chess lessons, as scores of poverty-stricken chess players benefited from the cachet that Mr. Fischer had conferred on them.

“That’s really how chess teaching began,” recalled Bruce Pandolfini, whose career as a teacher and writer was launched after he appeared with Mr. Lyman on public television. “Chess teachers didn’t really exist before 1972, not in any real numbers, but people started calling in to PBS, and they gave me a list of names, about 300 people. I charged $15 an hour and I encouraged others to do the same. I went from shelving books at the Strand bookstore to being a well-paid chess teacher.”

But Mr. Fischer was incapable of sustaining himself in the limelight, and by the beginning of 1973, he had withdrawn into the weird, contrarian solitude he more or less maintained for the remainder of his life. Over the years, he turned down huge financial offers to play, among them a bid of $1.4 million from the Hilton Corporation to defend his title in Las Vegas and even larger sums from dictators like Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and the Shah of Iran to compete in their countries. He said the money wasn’t enough.

At the same time, he tithed to the Worldwide Church of God, a fringe church he had become involved with beginning in the early 1960s. The church followed Hebrew dietary laws and Sabbath proscriptions and believed in the imminent return of Jesus Christ. For a time, Mr. Fischer lived in Pasadena, Calif., the church’s home base, or nearby Los Angeles, where he was said to spend his time replaying chess games and reading Nazi literature. There were reports that he was destitute, though the state of Mr. Fischer’s finances was never very clear.

In chess circles, rumors surfaced intermittently that he was playing, that he was training, that he was about to make a comeback. He invented a new kind of chess clock, which automatically rewarded players for moving quickly toward the end of the game, restoring time each time a move is made. He began railing to other chess players that computers, with their ability to analyze deeply into a position, had ruined the mystery of chess, making it knowable. He advocated a variation on the game in which the pieces on the back rank, at the start, are lined up randomly rather than in their prescribed formation. But he did not emerge publicly until 1992, when he accepted the offer to play against Mr. Spassky again on an island in the Adriatic.

A man of narrow interests but great intellectual gifts — he reportedly had an I.Q. of 181 — Mr. Fischer was a hugely demanding personality (some said charismatic, some merely infuriating) who felt his prowess as a chess player entitled him to exorbitant privilege. For much of his life, he fought imperiously on behalf of that entitlement, demanding uncompromising loyalty from his supporters, concessions from his opponents, special treatment from tournament organizers and unalloyed respect from the world at large. It was an outlook that became ever more skewed as his life went on. In the end his self-involvement was his undoing, isolating him from all but the most obsequious chess-world worshipers.

Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago on March 9, 1943. His father, a German-born physicist named Gerard, Gerhard or Gerhardt Fischer — his name appears variously spelled — and his mother, the former Regina Wender, divorced when Bobby was 2. Shortly thereafter, the elder Fischer left the United States and his family for good, and Bobby and his older sister, Joan, were reared by their mother, a Swiss-born registered nurse and schoolteacher.

Regina Fischer moved her young family first to California and then to Arizona before settling in a Brooklyn walkup, where Bobby grew up. The strong-willed Mrs. Fischer, who would later study medicine and become a political activist on behalf of pacifist causes both in the United States and Europe, had an uneven influence on her willful son.

When he was a teenager, she tried to dissuade him from concentrating solely on chess. “She keeps in my hair and I don’t like people in my hair, so I had to get rid of her,” Mr. Fischer once told a reporter. But she also helped raise money for her son to compete in international tournaments and even picketed the White House in an appeal for aid to the American delegation at the 1960 Chess Olympics. Still, after the Spassky championship match, when her son spoke of his admiration for Mr. Nixon, she campaigned vigorously for Senator George S. McGovern, Mr. Nixon’s opponent in the 1972 Presidential election.

Mrs. Fischer was Jewish; her son developed a hatred against Jews that became more virulent as he grew older. Nonetheless, mother and son evidently kept in touch over the years, and when she died in 1997, Mr. Fischer was said to have been distraught. His sister died soon afterward, and acquaintances of Mr. Fischer speculated that the two losses further taxed his fragile hold on rationality. Having never married or had children, Bobby Fischer leaves no immediate survivors.

It was his sister Joan who bought Bobby, then age 6, his first chess set, and taught him the basic moves. By the age of 8 he was taking lessons at the Brooklyn Chess Club and by age 12 he was holding his own among America’s strongest players, who gathered at the Manhattan Chess Club and the Marshall Chess Club. His adult opponents called him “the Boy Robot” and, for his unwavering wardrobe and insatiable will to win, “the Corduroy Killer.”

He was fiercely competitive — some said he was driven by an abject fear of losing. At the chessboard he possessed the pitilessness of a tyrant — “I love to see them squirm,” he once said of his opponents. From early on, he buttressed his penchant for original thinking with monumental study, and he became known for his mastery of the game’s literature. “Practice! Study! Talent!” was his formula for success. In a short time he would become incomparable at all phases of chess, from openings to endgames, and though renowned as an attacker, he was, like Garry Kasparov after him, an underrated, even brilliant defensive strategist.

He attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, but, indifferent to study and classes because they took time away from chess, he dropped out at 16. Mr. Pandolfini remembered: “When I was a kid, I’d go to the Marshall early in the morning, and Fischer would be there. There was a cabinet of filed games from the 19th century, thousands of games that someone, maybe a lot of people, had put on index cards and diagrammed by hand, and Fischer would be playing them, one at a time. I couldn’t understand why he was doing it. These were games using discarded ideas — the King’s Gambit and so on.”

The King’s Gambit — an opening strategy in which White sacrifices a kingside pawn to get a quick attack — had long been dismissed as too risky and romantic, seductive only to the blindly attack-minded.

Bobby Fischer, along with his contemporaries, favored other strategies, known by names like the Sicilian Defense (the epitome of a sharp counterattack by Black) or the Ruy Lopez (a slowly building game of maneuver for White). “But Fischer’s argument was that the old ideas were not necessarily bad ideas,” Mr. Pandolfini said. “They had merely fallen out of favor, and by injecting new thinking into an old idea, you created state-of-the-art logic.”

Graham Bowley contributed reporting.






NEWS: Ever wonder why we haven't caught Bigfoot yet?

I now know why that the phenomenon known as Bigfoot aka Sasquatch has never been caught. He had a transportational device which beamed him back to Mars ... lol

Seriously, Fox News reported this:

Is it Bigfoot? A Tusken Raider from the first "Star Wars" movie? Or just a rock?

British newspapers went crazy Wednesday morning about an image from Mars that appears to show a humanoid figure descending a shallow hillside.

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The "alien" is actually a blurry detail in a huge panoramic photograph snapped on the edge of Mars' Gusev crater by NASA's Spirit rover in early November, and posted on NASA's Web site on Jan. 2.

Naturally, it took the Photoshop skills of dedicated bloggers to find the "humanoid."


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• Click here for the full NASA image. If that doesn't work, try this. The figure is near the bottom left corner.

"NASA scientists have been puzzled by the peculiarly life-like image," declared the Times of London, despite the apparent fact that no one from NASA has had any comment.

The skeptical Web site BadAstronomy.com, however, scoffed, "Puhlllleeeeze. A man? It's a tiny rock only a few inches high. It's only a few feet from the rover!"

Other British papers saw the humo(u)r in the story, with the Sun theorizing that it was Detective Gene Hunt, the drunken, sexist policeman from the BBC time-traveling crime series "Life on Mars."

"It's Usama bin Laden!" declared one Times of London commenter. "All this time we thought he was in Pakistan."

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Space Center.

FOXNews.com is owned and operated by News Corporation, which also owns and operates the Times of London and the Sun.

Here's a blog that has ran the picture through different filters through a graphics program. You be the judge.

WOW! What if there were truly life on Mars? Really, think about that. What if there were truly life on Mars? Now I won't be able to sleep :-)




Sunday, January 20, 2008

Project DJKD - Deconstruction of the Tao of Jeet Kune Do

The story behind Bruce Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do (ToJKD) as I recall is as follows:

The book that was published was just Bruce Lee's notes for himself. It was never meant to be published. After his death, Dan Inosanto and Gil Johnson went through the notes and organized it somewhat and the result was what was published. It is well-known that Bruce Lee had an extensive library on a wide variety of subjects such as self-defense, physical culture, martial arts styles, philosophy, etc. Some of the illustrations which made it to the ToJKD were supposedly drawings traced from various books onto tracing paper. Edwin Haislet's Boxing formed the bulk of the ToJKD.

A few years ago, I was emailing with a friend who is an experienced martial artist, in addition to being an instructor, author and researcher. We were discussing the out-of-print book Jack Dempsey's Championship Fighting, IIRC. He mentioned that the ToJKD had parts of Dempsey's book. He then mentioned in passing that he deconstructed the whole ToJKD. That planted the seed in me that one day, although I don't have the resources that my friend has available to me, I would deconstruct the ToJKD to the best of my ability.

Fast forward to today, well, the decision to finally start this project and there you have it, one project that will be underway.

I am undecided if I will post entries here or make a separate blog of it. Thinking that the organization of it will probably be page by page with the ToJKD entry and the original source right underneath it. I will post future entries under the Label of Project DJKD. Wish me luck!

PROJECTS

From time to time, I get an idea for some project I want to work on. The idea is to research something and learn more about it and hopefully in the process understand something more after the project is completed. Also, share the results of the project either via my site or blog or whatever venues and avenues of distribution there may be, with the community.

Given my current stage in life of what the Dog Brothers call "The Family Man", I've not started many of the various projects I have in mind. This blog is one of the projects which I've started, albeit at a snail's pace. I may stay on one project until completion, or jump from one idea to another...I don't know now. Within the project, I may start at A, then followed by B, and then C and so on until Z...or I may start with D then O, and then G...I don't know, but what I do know is I will have fun and hopefully learn something while in the process and once the project's results is shared, hope it serves someone some use.

Of course, any misinterpretations, any mistakes, anything will be my doing and not the various areas/authors/subjects fault that I am researching.

With that said, two projects that I want to start and is not fully mapped out yet is:

1) Deconstruction of the Tao of Jeet Kune Do - I am undecided if this will be included in this blog or be a stand-alone blog. Basically the idea is to identify the sources of Bruce Lee's notes that got compiled by Dan Inosanto and Gil Johnson.

2) Online Dictionary of the Martial Arts -
an all encompassing dictionary/encylopedia/reference of the martial arts. If say someone wanted to learn how to jab and what a jab is, they can look up the Jab entry and see a pictorial sequence of how to perform the jab and the entry would also include text with either tips, a how-to, stories...etc. If the uninitiated wanted to look up 'puter kepala', they would find out what style it's from, a puter kepala done in pictures, etc.

Included in this dictionary, would be profiles of past luminaries as well as current names of the martial arts community. One easy way to get this going is probably to start another blog specific to just this project. Also, bordering on copyright infringements...either scans of articles and/or books would be used...a faster method would be to use existing webpages. Instead of linking to the original site, perhaps to have the entries' info centralize to this blog, the original page's contents would be copied to the blog. This may not be the best way, but credit would be given to the original site. I may or may not have time to contact the siteowner about the borrowing of their page. These are some considerations I'm mulling over before getting this project off the ground.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

QUOTES: Brandon Lee - Imperfection/Mediocrity

About 2 weeks into the New Year and I still haven't made my New Year's Resolutions, mostly because I think 'resolution' is too defeatist. I prefer 'goal'.'Resolution' from the outset in my mind is a lose-lose proposition. Whereas 'goal' is something I can strive for. I don't know if this is NLP at work or not LOL

I am reminded of a quote attributed to the late Brandon Lee:



"For what level of mediocrity will you settle?"


Alternately:


"For what level of imperfection will you settle?"

Regardless of which one is correct...they both are powerful. Strive to be your best...do not settle for any imperfection or mediocrity!

Friday, January 11, 2008

NLP: 'remember' vs. 'do not forget'

Back in the mid-90's, I worked in retail during the day as I went to college at night. More specifically it was a haute couture boutique. There were a fair share of the celebrities who passed through those doors. I recall Russell Wong (first Asian actor to star in a prime-time series, The Vanishing Son), Patrick Stewart (X-Men movies' Prof. X & Star Trek's Capt. Jean-Luc Picard), Betty Buckley (TV Eight is Enough and Broadway play, Cats) and Ric Ocasek (lead singer of The Cars).

Anyway, I digress...at this boutique, there was a salesman who taught me this little gem...he called it positive thinking...later I found out it's more along the lines of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).

Instead of saying/thinking, "Don't forget to watch American Gladiators premiere"...say/think "Remember to watch American Gladiators premiere". The former, you will start thinking sooner or later, what am I supposed to forget? Compare that to the latter's, what am I supposed to remember?

So don't forget to remember to use 'remember' instead of 'don't forget' LOL






TV: I missed most of the American Gladiators premiere

Sad to say, I forgot, er I did not remember (digression on 'forgot' vs 'did not remember' in a separate entry) on this past Sunday night the return of the American Gladiators to TV :-( Not sure how it did in the ratings or if it was any good. But shows like that are based on the contestants and I hope the contestants were more than able to give the AG a run for the money...those make for exciting shows.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

LINKS: Tom Furman's blog is moving to his site

I first "heard" of Tom Furman via his posts to the e-mailing FMA discussion list, Eskrima Digest...he is into Conditioning, the FMA, Silat and loads more. If you haven't visited his blog or site yet, check it out...loads of great posts, info, and links:

http://physicalstrategies.blogspot.com/

is moving to:

http://www.physicalstrategies.com/


Although our exchange of emails were brief, I think of him as a friend in the Way. When I had time to regularly read Eskrima Digest in the past, I always looked forward to his posts and the questions he raised which sparked some nice discussions.

And I am sad to report that his father, Richard Furman, passed away a few days ago. My prayers and sincerest condolences to Tom and his family.

Saturday, January 05, 2008

TV: Pictures of the new American Gladiators

Here are the new American Gladiators:

Crush

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Fury

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Helga

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Justice

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Mayhem

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Militia

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Siren

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Stealth

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Titan

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Toa

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Venom

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Wolf

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Official Site






TV: The Return of American Gladiators to TV

Remember the show called American Gladiators from the early 90's?




From wikipedia:
American Gladiators is an American competition television program that matches a cast of amateur athletes against each other, as well as against the show's own "gladiators", in contests of strength and agility. Originally a weekly first-run syndication show, running from 9/16/89 to 5/11/96, it is being revived as a 2008 prime-time series on NBC.


In this day and age of reality-TV and post-"Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?" gameshows, it appears it's coming back and may be a hit. Only time will tell.

Here is the official site. Wrestling's Hulk Hogan and the daughter of Muhammed Ali, Laila Ali, are set to host.
NBC's revival of American Gladiators is scheduled to premiere on Sunday 1/6/08, and will then move to Mondays at 8:00 ET/PT.


Events

  • Assault: The contender has 60 seconds to make it through a course that spanned the entire arena floor, firing off weapons to hit a target located near the Gladiator, while avoiding high-speed tennis balls fired at them from a cannon.
  • Earthquake: The contender and Gladiator wrestle in a battle in a 12' diameter platform that is moving above the floor of the arena. Whoever throws their opponent off is the winner.
  • Gauntlet: The contenders have to run through a half-pipe chute while avoiding five Gladiators, all holding blocking pads to impede the contender's progress.
  • Hang Tough; The contender has 60 seconds to negotiate a grid of gymnastics rings to get to a platform on the other side of the course, while trying to avoid a Gladiator who is swinging against the contender.
  • Hit & Run: The contenders simultaneously traverse a 50 foot suspension bridge hanging above the water tank. Four Gladiators, two on each side of the bridge, attempt to knock the contender off using four 100-pound demolition balls.
  • Powerball: The contenders have 45 seconds to place balls into one of five containers in the field, which are protected by three Gladiators.
  • Pyramid: The contenders have 45 seconds to scale a pyramid and press a scoring button while three Gladiators work to throw the contenders off of the pyramid.
  • Joust: The contender and Gladiator hit each other with pugil sticks until time expires or one of them falls from their platform.
  • The Wall: The contenders scale a 40 foot tall wall while two Gladiators pursue them. The first contender to reach the top wins.
  • The Eliminator: The Eliminator, the final event, is an obstacle course. The first contender to finish the Eliminator wins the competition.







EDIT:  3/21/13 - Do not underestimate the popularity of American Gladiators! Perhaps it was Gina Carano's popularity instead once she started fighting in MMA/making movies which propelled this entry to be the 9th most popular post as of this writing?

Individual pictures and names of the Gladiators posted here:

TV: Pictures of the new American Gladiators




My other Gina Carano posts:



Wednesday, January 02, 2008

RECO: Ancient Bare Knuckle Muay Thai Seminar Vol 2 DVD

A recommendation (RECO) from me. My review forthcoming.

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The Ancient Bare Knuckle Muay Thai Physical Structure DVD focuses on the myriad of tactics and fighting strategies of the various regional bare knuckle systems that existed in Thailand when bare knuckle fighting flourished throughout the kingdom. The original tactics were then synthesized and streamlined into what we know of as the popular sport of ring Muay Thai.

In this second volume devoted to physical structure, the viewer is introduced to the extensive arsenal of the bare knuckle toolbox that are then developed through a series of unique physical foundation skill development exercises that enhance and functionalize them. Beginning with the warm up sequence into the extensive kicks, punches, knees and elbows, the teaching sequence accelerates into footwork, line drills, using the triangle, varied offensive and defensive strategies on the inside and outside lines, the art of opening, sinking, moving the mind to open the target as well as a deeper understanding of the Khorat style tiger walk and the Chaiya style lion walk and the ability to translate basic weapons tactics to empty hand strategy.

Each volume in this series stands on its own though they are designed specifically to work in tandem as a clear progressive teaching guide that will benefit both beginner and advanced martial arts practitioners.

Colonel Amnat Pooksrisuk has devoted his entire life to the preservation and propagation of the complete spectrum of Thai Martial Arts as well as the strategies and principles that govern them. A graduate of US War College and a career military man, he has tirelessly trained and documented many of the ancient and modern training methods under the last remaining Grandmasters throughout Thailand. A key figure in the World Muay Thai Council, he continously works to promote Muay Thai throughout the world. Ajarn Pooksrisuk is one of the few remaining masters who possesses the knowledge of how the Pichai Songkram or Thai Manual of Warfare provides the keys to understanding the underlying principles that govern all the Thai Martial Arts.

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"Colonel Amnat's "Ancient Bareknuckle Muay Thai" series is a must for any serious martial artist or fighter. For the novice, the Colonel clearly and concisely presents Muay Thai in its most basic form, laying down a foundation upon which the entire art is built. For the experienced practitioner, the lessons contained within these DVD's begin to tie the varying systems of Muay Thai together into a single, cohesive style of fighting."

- Kru Brooks C. Miller (aka Khun Kao)
USMTA State Director of Virginia
Ayuthaya Pro-Fitness MuayThai of Sterling, VA


Running time: 120 minutes

ORDERING INFO:

http://www.bareknucklemuay.com/

RECO: Ancient Bare Knuckle Muay Thai Seminar DVD

A recommendation (RECO) from me. My review forthcoming.

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The Ancient Bare Knuckle Muay Thai Seminar DVD focuses on the tactics and fighting strategies of the various regional bare knuckle systems that existed in Thailand when bare knuckle fighting flourished throughout the kingdom. The original tactics were then synthesized and streamlined into what we now know of as modern ring Muay Thai.

The older bare knuckle fighting methods were complete martial arts systems for use not only in the ring but also for self defense, meditative and ceremonial practice as well as health and restoration. The various regional systems along with the fighters and masters that propagated them provided an incredible bank of techniques from which a practitioner could draw from and perfect. The popularity of ring Muay Thai along with the banning of the bare knuckle tournaments lead to its fast decline with few of the actual systems remaining in functional practice today.

In this first volume dedicated to foundation strategies, the viewer will be lead for the first time ever through a complete understanding of what is Muay, the seven principles of the Thai martial arts, the seven tenets that establish a foundation for action, the art of disruption and the decision cycle as well as an array of techniques from the infamous tiger walk to the various footwork patterns and attacks.

Colonel Amnat Pooksrisuk has devoted his entire life to the preservation and propagation of the complete spectrum of Thai martial arts as well as the strategies and principles that govern them. A career military man, he has tirelessly trained and documented many of the ancient and modern methods under the last remaining Grandmasters throughout Thailand. A key figure in the World Muay Thai Council, he continuously works to promote Muay Thai throughout the world. Ajarn Pooksrisuk is one of the few remaining masters who possesses the knowledge of how the Pichai Songkram or Thai Manual Of Warfare provides the keys to understanding the underlying principles that govern all the Thai Martial Arts.

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" A vital reminder that the depth of the Thai Martial Arts have rarely been explored or even understood in the West. Colonel Amnat Pooksrisuk passionately shares his knowledge on the foundation strategies and principles many of which still reverberate today in the modern Muay Thai ring. A superb DVD for those seeking to understand the underpinnings of the ancient bare knuckle systems. "

- Clint Heyliger,
United States Muay Thai Association

Running time: 82 minutes

ORDERING INFO:

http://www.ancientmuay.com/

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

GRAPPLING: "Hercules and Diomedes" Statue (1550)


"Hercules and Diomedes" (1550) is one of six in a group of statues by Baroque sculptor Vincenzo de Rossi (1525-1587), located in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. According to Greek mythology, Diomedes is an adversary, who Hercules throws to man-eating mares. This statue was referred to by the late Colonel Rex Applegate as "Original Combat".

No comment on Diomedes defense against Hercules' throw ;-)

NOTE: My thanks to my friend IBI, a mod on www.mma.tv for posting this pic originally.

HUMOR: Chuck Norris Facts

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Some humor to start the New Year off. By now, I'm sure everyone has heard a Chuck Norris Fact before. Some of the ones that me LOL:

When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn't lifting himself up, he's pushing the Earth down.

Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried. Ever.

Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.

When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.

When you open a can of whoop-ass, Chuck Norris jumps out.

Check out this Youtube vid of Chuck Norris reading the Chuck Norris Facts!



Here are 2 sites for more - http://www.thechucknorrisfacts.com/ and http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com.

An addendum, someone tried to publish a book on the Chuck Norris Facts and Chuck Norris was fast to nip that in the bud with a lawsuit citing unlawful use of his image or something similar. Lastly, here's the wiki page.

Enjoy!







Happy New Year!

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May this New Year bring you health, wealth and happiness to you and your loved ones! May all your resolutions come true!!

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Stickgrappler's Sojourn of Septillion Steps