Bookworm Room

I managed to miss most of the music from the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st Century.  Don’t ask me how.  I just did.  So I also  managed to miss Ricky Martin entirely.  Here’s how I learned about him, and one of his songs: The other day, my husband and I watched the [...]

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I’ve been thinking today about unmatched combatants and a combatant’s willingness to take hits in order to win a fight.  I think about the former often because, when I do jujitsu, I am an unmatched combatant.  I’m usually the only woman in the adult classes, which means that the people (i.e., men) with whom I’m [...]

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At the dojo today, we did a bit of sparring.  Afterwards, the teacher told us about “The Book of Five Rings,” a fighting treatise that the great Samurai warrior, Miyamoto Musashi wrote in about 1645.  Musashi was an extraordinary duelist, winning in part because of his skill, and in part because of his utterly fearless [...]

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The other day, the Daily Mail ran an article about the exponential increase in stranger attacks in England, a byproduct of the public drunkenness that is increasing at an even faster rate than the violence.  I still remember when England was a remarkably safe, clean little country, except in the worst neighborhoods of the biggest [...]

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There’s a debate about whether this is Bruce Lee handling the nunchuck, but it’s amazing no matter who is doing it:

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I don’t remember how the conversation started, but a few days ago I found myself explaining to my children that, amongst all human beings, regardless of their race or culture, there is one common denominator for beauty: symmetry. This means that whether a culture measures beauty by fair or dark skin, light or dark hair, [...]

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As I mentioned earlier, I’ve returned to martial arts after a ten year hiatus.  I wasn’t good then, and I’m worse now (and definitely more rickety), but oh! how I love it. One of the things I’m learning at this dojo, which I didn’t learn in my last go round at martial arts (since it [...]

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