Heart, Soul, and Body

In changing oneself for the better, first one must know what exactly is “oneself”.

http://neoneocon.com/2013/05/18/the-scandals-the-public-and-the-left-believe-it/#comment-597594

This is why people understand things in the order of instincts, emotions, and then logic. The first is always truer than the second, yet the second is also truer than the third.

The Japanese call it ai or love. Religious believers say it is loyalty and love of God. Warriors speak of the moment separating life and death, where truth outsines the redness of blood and the blackness of hate/fear. Yet it is the intellectual that speaks of science, of creating/destroying life for material gain, of laws and how to game those laws.

Sankarea + Suisei no Gargantia + Shingeki no Kyojin

After having watched 3 episodes of Sankarea, 7 episodes of Suise no Gargantia and Shingeki no Kyojin (Gargantia on the Verdurous planet and Attack on Titan), there are some things I’ve been thinking about.

Shingeki started off almost on the classic hero/shounen story line. A young child faces adversity and obtains the motivation to strive for power in order to defeat a foe or obtain a goal. However, it readily departed into a Muv Luv Alternative universe where the concepts of life and death drive the plot and characters.

Gargantia started off in that total war of extermination/extinction, just like MLA, but then started providing a cultural glimpse into a different lifestyle of peace and cooperation. Shingeki appeared to be predictable in the plot, but that’s not how it turned out. Gargantia felt like it was going to do the military high casualty war but most of its episodes so far went in the other direction. These unexpected surprises and changes in the plot setup are refreshing and keeps me guessing.

Sankarea is also getting deep on the dramatic moments. Even though on its surface, it appeared like a romantic comedy about utterly fantastic/fantasy elements portrayed against regular teenage high school life.

All of them I like, if only because the power of life cannot be appreciated until one accepts the power of death.

A Quantum Internet

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514581/government-lab-reveals-quantum-internet-operated-continuously-for-over-two-years/

I can’t help but recall how many times Japanese science fiction has used quantum mechanics as the basis for the plot or a world creation. The fact that they expect the common consumer in Japan to understand these things while the US is mostly concerned about making money off of Hollywood gun violence, porn, and abortion is its quantum paradigm.

Full Body Control: Martial Art Training

This is an example of a previous concept, rooting, used to fuel or compose different techniques and applications. Much as a car can be customized with different rims, hoods, paint, and various other components, the martial artist trains in two diverse fashions.

1. Acquiring techniques from others or creating them from scratch.

2. Learning to control their body in order to apply power to action.

The popular method to learn or train in martial arts is to do 1 first and then 2. People learn a form or two, some techniques, and practice them. All in the hopes that they will get to 2, the ability to control their own bodies. Why don’t people just start with 2? 2 is required to get 1, but 1 isn’t required to get to 2. A person lacking any techniques and have created none, will still be able to adapt to a conflict and find a way to victory. Simple is better in battles and wars, so long as you have the power.

In many ways, customizing one’s martial arts is either the goal or the road, depending on one’s objectives. However, there is a significant difference between an add on that adds functionality to a car and an add on that is merely cosmetic or even reduces the functionality of a car. Those who know techniques, but do not know how to construct or deconstruct them, will be unable to tell what is functional vs what is non-functional. Their best bet is to listen to gurus and others, some con artists, to tell them which way is best. That’s about the same as an artist sketching out somebody else’s painting as a way to produce art. In the art world, a forgery may bring you shame or embarrassment. In martial arts, it’ll get you killed.

The application in the video is rather simple. All the power being applied to the upper torso is redirected to the ground via the spine, hips, and legs. Muscle control is merely used to maintain the alignment to prevent power from being blocked. The person being pushed isn’t exerting much energy and thus will appear to gain power over a long fight. Utilizing the energy of the earth’s gravy well and mass is very fuel efficient.

Rewrite: Visual Novel Review

This was pretty good. Either at the top 5 or near it in my personal estimation.

I started normally, finishing the routes for the 5 heroines. 3 were open at first, 2 were unlocked later. I suspected, however, that there was some secret ura stories like in Muv Luv. It turned out to be true. The details, of course, I will leave the reader to find out for themselves.

The dramatic component was done quite well, with different combinations of sadness and sublime beauty combined together on each story plot. Each route essentially tells the story of one world line in quantum mechanics, split based upon player decisions and then plot forking.

The romantic elements were varied between action sequences, dark heroic moments, hero of justice moments, and various gray shades between. Multi themed, I would say it was. This VN is listed as having routes being completely different in plot from each other. Thus it makes it similar to Fate Stay/night, the first VN I read. Very exciting and far less boring to redo the common route from the beginning.

Those with weak mental or stomach tolerances, perhaps should watch out or at least train yourself to a higher tolerance as you read the story. Many of the things in the story I have experienced myself, faced the question of doing, or otherwise dealt with in my life, so I found it easy to accept some of the more dramatic confrontations. Others may feel different.

Overall, the protagonist was someone, especially at the end, that I felt very close or comfortable with. In that sense, it takes away some of the adventure (people doing crazy things that would be too scary to do yourself) and excitement from it for me. In compensation, I felt comfortable and pleased with the True End. No disagreements or fundamental disgruntled emotional opinions. For those with little or no experience of certain human phenomenon in the world, they may be more disturbed emotionally by the events depicted in Rewrite. Which is part of the fun, challenging your own self to change emotionally or intellectually. See if you are up to the challenge.

This is a great story for males that want a combination of romance, action, and seinen (teenager grows into an adult) story lines. I can’t speak too much for what females may like in the story, except that the romance is quite well done. Romance is often a side plot in action movies, a way to justify two characters being together but not much else. When I say “romance” in Rewrite, I mean the kind of story where the man is motivated to save or destroy the world because his love of his woman demands it. That kind of epic romantic adventure.

Guns: It’s about Justice and Trust

Some people think America’s going through this phase or trend about how to make gun legislation and control better. What they don’t know is the truth behind the smoke and mirrors, what is going on underneath the table.

http://www.iowastatedaily.com/opinion/article_1c144792-b36d-11e2-8ac6-001a4bcf887a.html?mode=story

In essence, it’s about who is on the side of justice and whether one faction should trust the others. Without a knowledge of why people are for or against justice or why they support this faction or that one in America, there’s no way people can decipher the truth from the propaganda or the propaganda from the truth.

Most of the actual human reasons and motivations are included in the article. It’s a convenient way for me to avoid doing the linking.

I often told people that tens of millions of Americans would rather fight criminals and terrorists with their bare hands than trust the government with their protection. There’s also the issue that there’s no particular reason to trust elected federal officials over one’s neighbors. Guns in the hands of a neighborhood work rather well, since people can learn to trust each other. Guns in the hands of the government or urban cities controlled by socialist gangs, is a different matter since they are above the common man, and DC considers itself part of the ruling class. Trust in one’s neighbors has nothing to do with trust in one’s “ruling aristos”. It doesn’t matter if somebody wants to vote in a tyrant. That doesn’t mean I should trust them with my guns, my kids, my house, or my vault full of gold. People should seriously consider fences and property lines when it comes to trust. It’s not an omnipotent or all encompassing thing, at least not for humans.

Convenient Concepts: Drawing strength from the earth through strong roots

The term “rooting” is often used from a Chinese martial arts perspective. It refers to the instance when the human body, through the leg and heel, is connected so strongly to the ground that opponents attempting to move that body needs to use as much strength as it would take to shift the ground underneath. This has resulted in various portrays of an almost magical paradigm in China, similar to the portrayal of guns in Western culture: so powerful you don’t need skill or intent to use it, it just happens.

While the power is almost as great as it is portrayed in popular fiction, it requires skill to be used, there is no getting around that aspect. No more than a child can fly using nothing but will power magic without learning how to walk, run, or swim to the airport.

As mentioned before, usable power in martial arts can be divided into internal and external sources. The internal will run forever so long as the engine and fuel remains. The external source will run until it exhausts itself. In this fashion, a baseball will maintain momentum up until its inertial is exhausted by hitting something or by the friction through air. A jet, however, can maintain momentum so long as its engine and fuel supply exists.

Rooting is a convenient concept, but also difficult to ponder. It is convenient since it allows the human mind to easily grasp how to draw power from a source, but it is hard because these powers are not normally something humans can imagine themselves using. While it is possible to reconstruct or construct martial techniques based upon original compositions of power, shapes, and applications, it is much faster to use pre-existing concepts and applications that have been tested. It’s the difference between engineers utilizing the laws of physics to construct the strongest bridge through trial and error alone, or utilizing an existing bridge design that has been tested against cross winds and resonance vibrations.

The key power source in rooting is gravity. What allows it to be used by humans is a hybrid construction of both internal and external power sources. Mastery of gravity is done through indirect means that utilize mastery of one’s own body movements and balance. To put it another way, destructive force can be generated merely by climbing up a skyscraper, dropping a big rock, and watching it smash whatever it hits below you. You did not technically “generate” that power, nor was it an internal origin source from the rock itself. Gravity did most of the work, but you were the one that supplied external power to the rock to move it to the right height, and that power came from your internal engine and fuel source (muscles, blood, sugar, carbohydrates, nerves, etc).

Rooting is as simple a thing as understanding how to combine internal and external power sources under your own control. Gravity will not run out of power any time soon. Yet you cannot control it directly. You can control your body directly through neural commands. Thus a martial artist can integrate as their own internal power, the power of the Earth’s gravity well itself. So long as your body and mind lasts, at least.

What makes internal martial arts seem like magic without effort is merely that most of their efforts are kept to a minimum, in order to control and not obstruct the power that they are getting from elsewhere. External martial arts rely predominantly on mastery of the body in order to develop and utilize the body’s own internal power supply for attack and defense. This will last right up until you get wounded, get old, or get tired (run out of fuel). External thus means to focus on generating power, speed, and stamina to affect the outside world. Internal martial arts are focused more on what’s going on inside the body, as erasing blockages in power allows for the greatest increase in strength. This may seem like a minor detail that will get people to the same place either way they go, but it’s a rather fundamental difference. Not only in the starting point, but in the ending point (the meaning of the journey itself).

To put it in modern world technological terms, pure external strength is like a NASA shuttle packed with all kinds of liquid fuel and sent to burn into orbit using the force of the acceleration generated to overcome the earth’s gravity well. Internal mastery would be more akin to those people in squirrel suits, the size of a normal human body, jumping off cliffs and allowing the wind currents and the gravity well itself, to supply the impulse for them to maintain height and speed. They don’t have an engine on their glider. They carry no fuel. Yet they control where they move, within the context of their metaphysical world.

Using such convenient concepts as “rooting”, humans can construct and deconstruct martial techniques at an ever increasing speed and efficiency. For example, it is easy to conclude that a technique that often has both feet off the ground, such as a jumping spin kick, utilizes rooting not at all. One cannot have a root while unconnected to the ground or anything else for that matter. Why that is good or bad comes in a later section: tactics and strategy.