I found this on Digg.com – an apparent self-defense usage of the common magazine. I have a hard time believing that this is serious. Not that I don’t believe there could be some self-defense applications that utilize magazines but more so the “swatting” would only be dangerous to a fly.

Well watch this video for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Let me just say it lightened my mood.

As you all know by know – I try to cover the hard hitting issues in martial arts. One such area affecting our national security is how robots, androids, and super computers might be used in future conflicts. I mean are the dogs of war going to be unleashed without using real dogs?

One such movie that explores this idea somewhat is Iron Man! Yes as a boy I used to read about Tony Starks adventures when he put on the suit effectively making him a robot!

In this post I am going to explore robots in popular music, movies, TV and as a replacement for troublesome mates! To start out this humorous litany take a look at this almost top hit song!

Ha ha but I don’t really think Sir Killalot’s androids would really be all that effective but what about a real robot suit or android? Well if one could build a suit of armor that had some space age technology it might just be the ticket.

I watched the first Iron Man movie and was impressed. They did a good job capturing some of the excitement from the comic book – bringing the look and feel to the silver screen!

The world over, average folk dream about an equalizer that would let them even things up. Robotic assisted devices will someday help people in there everyday lives and perhaps even keep them safe. Take a look at the Iron Man 2 trailer and some tongue and cheek commentary.

Cool – Tony Stark has finally done what humanity and beauty queens have tried to achieve for years! – World Peace!

Ok kidding aside, wouldn’t it be neat if robots could keep us save such as in Isaac Asimov’s robot series? It went something like this… robots could not harm a human or through inaction allow harm to come to a human. There were three or four of these robot laws. Unfortunately as I am also a computer geek – I don’t have a lot of faith in technology… look at Toyota… but I digress.

Iron Man 2 looks to have some cool fight scenes as it seems to explore the motif of money and power! But really I am going to go see the movie because I have always thought robots are cool. I used to dream about being a robot – living forever and panhandling to tourists (did you like this transition?) – watch this video.

Ok! You see I was finally able to work in some robot fighting into this post.

But when I was a kid I also used to watch some TV shows about implanted men/women/androids in the Six Million Man and the Bionic Woman. It was fun to see how they were rebuilt to be better than before (and for the good of humanity!). Here is a clip of the Bionic Woman going undercover as a female wrestler.

Having some bionic parts can sure come in handy. We are already seeing some of that in real life now but 30 years ago that was just a dream. Back when this show was on it was riveting.

One more movie with a strange plot was the Stepford Wives. Now admittedly there was not much fighting in this one but I included it because of how strange it would be if people were replaced by android robots in real life!

For the record, officially I am against androids replacing women!

I hope you have enjoyed yet another tenuous link to fighting, Robot Fighters. I think with so much bad stuff happening in the world, it is important to take a break and look at some humor now and then. I’ll close with the real Iron Man song if you care to hear a high quality version. Please join me in watching Iron Man 2 in the theaters next month.

All of you boys and girls out there know that you better not shout or pout because Santa’s coming to town. Have you ever wondered about Santa? Can the old fat guy in the red suit, fight his way out of a paper bag?

In this post I hope to answer that question as well as look at Saturday’s headliner fights in the WEC 45 and Strikforce Evolution. First take a look at this Santa!

If I had to guess I would say that kid ended up on the naughty list! Word on the street is Santa does not exactly turn the other rosy cheek anymore but that Santa has been learning Kung Fu! Look at this smuggled video I was able to obtain of Christmas Town’s Kung Fu club.

Need a holiday gift? A subscription to Sports Illustrated for KIDS makes a great present.

Although I really like watching the WEC normally I was kind of bored by the fights last Saturday. Don’t get me wrong – the fights that I did see except for the headliner were good but without a great headline fight – I ended of the evening feeling empty.

Donald Cerrone faced Ed Ratcliff (currently hailing from San Diego) for the right for a title fight soon. Cerrone is tall and lanky but Ratcliff is shorter and explosive. At first I was enjoying this match up as Ratcliff was darting in and out of Cerrone’s range.

But soon I tired of Cerrone’s accidental knees to Ratcliff’s groin. Cerrone had two point deductions and eventually was able to finish a choke to win the fight in the 3rd. The fight was only close in the first round but dragged on due with the groin shots in the first two rounds.

Ratcliff looks like he is an up and coming fighter that just did not have a good plan to fight Cerrone with his reach advantage. I look forward to good things from him in the future.

Cerrone always does well and coming off of his close loss by decision from Henderson, he seemed off of his normal game. Fighting a shorter guy should have been easier to avoid the knees to the groin, but due to them – he almost lost the match if it had gone the distance.

Too bad Santa was not fighting in the WEC Saturday night. Santa has been working his skills and might have challenged the Easter Bunny for a good match up! Here is a quick video of Santa stopping a shoplifter as some mall.

Disappointed by the WEC (and because I did not have showtime to see Strikeforce), I searched the internet for Cung Le vs Scott Smith. Here is one link that works right now if you want to see this fight here (it takes a minute to start after you push play).

My wife and I got all into this fight because Cung Le is an exciting fighter. Early on Cung Le set the pace of this fight by throwing spinning rear kicks – knocking down Smith. Le attempted to close the deal in the first round with some hammer fists but you could see he was not really comfortable with ground fighting.

Smith had some good hands but was seemingly unnerved with the ease Le was able to kick him. I had Le ahead all three rounds until Smith was able clip Le with a left hook with two minutes to spare… it was a rapid demise after that attack.

Well now we really enjoyed watching Cung Le vs Scott Smith. Both of them are great fighters and deserve everything they get. I hope Le trains some more on the ground game and not just how to avoid getting taken down so the next time he is in a winning position he can close the deal!

Santa is still hitting the gym so I’ll close with a look at Santa’s latest workout.

Merry Christmas to all!

Every once in a while I am totally taken aback by a story I find on the internet, one that leaves me scratching my head (by the way if you’ve seen my head, I don’t have much hair left!). Well I found a youtube video series by a Dr. Scott Johnson entitled, “The Spiritual Danger of Martial Arts” that is kind of funny to me.

Now longtime readers of this blog know that one of my rules is to have reasonable discourse about topics, not to use personal attacks. I will resist the urge and ask any commenters to do the same. For me this is a reasonable platform to speak about Dr. Johnson’s main points and make some valid counter arguments.

Here is a PDF of Dr. Johnson’s sermon and the first youtube video below. Dr. Johnson goes off topic a lot trying to clarify his points so I suggest you might just read/skim the the 9 pages (7-15 on the PDF) as it will be faster then clicking on the videos. In this post I will give my frame of reference and rebut some of the fallacies found in this video/PDF.

Now I know how talking about sex, politics and religion can be touchy but please know that is not my intention to attack Christians in this post but rather this one preacher’s opinion on the martial arts.

Get your sports illustrated subscription for $10 off.

Just for full disclosure purposes I will reveal (although I hope it has not been apparent in my writing) I am a non-denominational Christian. My roots in religion are Catholic from my childhood, Protestant in my early adulthood. Now I mostly claim Catholic and Protestant leanings in my non-denominational worship.

The preacher’s sermon speaks about 5 main points:

1. Martial arts originate in false religion
2. Martial arts are part of occult philosophy
3. The concept of self-defense is unscriptural and anti-christian
4. Martial arts glorify the flesh
5. By the fruits you shall know them

Before we begin, lets define Christianity, in the simplest terms, to be a Christian, one believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God or said another way, believes in Jesus. Although there is some disagreement among sects of Christianity as what a Christian is – I believe this definition is broadly supported.

Is there one true religion? Many religions might claim to know the answer to this but as a thinking man, I submit to you that there is no way of knowing the answer to this question.

So if there is not an “Authoritative” answer to which religion is right, how can we accepted this preacher’s view? My answer is we cannot.

By the way according to Wikipedia.com, in 2005, Christianity accounted for 33% of the worlds peoples. Islam accounted for 20% and the Hindus has 13% of the people. The rest of the world’s religions including atheists only has small percentages of followers.

Ok, say that we get beyond the authority question, just how many Christians does this preacher speak for, or what is Dr. Johnson’s percentage of outreach?

That is hard to know because anyone can make claims on the internet and it is up to the viewers to have to tools to discern the validity of the source! One example is where there are a lot of conservatives (I used to be one of them before college) that follow a radio show called the Rush Limbaugh show.

Rush for instance is a very reasonable man in a lot of instances. It is easy for one to find commonality with his views if one is a conservative. The issue for me is Rush takes a stand and does not fairly evaluate other equally valid points of view. It is his way or the highway in some many words.

The danger of this Dr. Johnson might be that with some Christians that already come from churches that believe many normal things are demonic, will view this sermon as proof that karate is providing a false testament!

Now that I have set the stage, lets examine the arguments:

Point 1, about karate originating in a false religion is a rather narrow way of looking at the world. Because one person is not like me – he must be bad? Say you believe your religion is the only true religion, why is everything else evil? Was the whole world created to just tempt you?

I’m sorry but just because karate’s creators were involved with Buddhism, I don’t see the link that what my kid learn from an American strip-mall karate school is bad. So by this ministers theory, (picking on Zen Buddhism for a moment), becoming a better acher with Zen meditation techniques are actually demonic somehow?

Point 2, about occult philosophy, Dr. Johnson makes the point that breaking ice or such that cannot be done by a normal person, he enters into the world of the occult (paraphrasing)! What? All it takes is practice. No superhuman forces are at work but rather training and discipline.

The preacher went on to say that Mas Oyama’s bull horn breaking technique powers came from a superhuman source? What? Oyama did what any other tough son of a gun could train himself to do… overcome adersity! Admittedly Mas Oyama was at the top of his game but he was not supernatural.

Point 3, Self-defense is unscriptural and anti-Christian? Christians as a people and Christian nations certainly do not take turn the other cheek literally or else there would be no crime or wars very soon… as soon as the Christian’s were eliminated (from not fighting back). Click the link to see some of the interpretations but again this preacher is trying to say karate is inherently evil because it teaches people to defend themselves.

Would then this preacher think governments, authorities, and other religions that preach the right of self defense as evil too? Oh wait, this preacher pretty much thinks that everyone not like him is evil.

Point 4, Martial arts glorify the flesh? Sorry but I did not get his point here. Does he mean we are worshiping idols? It would be a mis-statement to assume that martial artists that are at the top of their game  and who are also religious, believe they are gods. They may give thanks for their god-given talent however.

Point 5, By their actions, you shall know them. This one is really funny. When I sold life insurance, I was taught the poison pill speech. If I was losing a sale I would simply “help” the client with their search criteria when they were looking for a policy with another company. I would then proceed to tell the client about the traits of a bad policy all the while talking up mine.

In this case Dr. Johnson invokes the kitchen sink argument. He states that Christians that took up karate started fighting, abusing and such and were not really good Christians. Had I been sitting in his church (oh wait – I don’t think he has one), he would have pounded the pulpit at that point because he did not really have an argument!

In conclusion he states:

The whole concept and practice of the martial arts contradicts Christianity. It is at once, occult, fleshly, man serving, and Christ denying. It is, in fact, anti-christian in spirit, philosophy, and practice. Smashing bricks and breaking boards opposes the example of Christ…

I tend to take the view point that we have an absolute right to defend ourselves if attacked. Turing the other cheek, I think, means more about not taking revenge than giving up (that can mean you are dead). Also I was kind of puzzled why boxing and wrestling were not mentioned. They would have all of the same problems except perhaps for the non-Buddhist boxers.

I hope you have enjoyed this funny review of this preacher’s views of the Martial Arts. I did have some fun pointing out some of the fallacies of his arguments but please do not forget that self-defense is a serious subject. I will close with a video of some good reasons to NOT turn the other cheek!