Sabre, pt 2: Right of way sucks

So, following on from my last post about sabre, I can assure my readers that turning up did not, in fact, guarantee me a medal.

Largely because four other people also turned up, and I managed to be worse than all of them.

Or, did I?

Out of the five of us, there was actually only one other competitor that had more experience with sabre than I did.  I had a better idea of the moves and the rules.  And I got most of the hits in most of my bouts.

The problem was that stupid right-of-way rule.

The right-of-way rule is a bit like the fencing equivalent of table tennis's rule against hitting a ball "on the full".  With table tennis, you have to let the ball bounce on your side of the table before you can hit it back.  Simple, straight forward, easy.

With fencing (in foil and sabre), you have to let the person who started the attack complete the move.  Either their lead foot has to touch the floor, or their sword has to make contact with something.  By parrying the attack, you make their sword touch your sword, so their move is over and it's your turn.  Should be simple, but it's not.

It's really clear in table tennis when a ball is passing over the net, and once it makes contact with the table, you're sweet.  But in fencing it all comes down to who's foot moved first, whether or not they put it down before their sword made contact (and if the other person manage to move their foot before or after they put their foot down), whether or not the sword still managed to touch the other person even if they parried, whether or not the judge thought you moved your hand the wrong way and cancelled your own attack...  the list of considerations seems endless.

Time after time I was told my hits didn't count because the other person moved their foot a fraction before I moved mine, or my reposts were just a fraction out of time.  So time and time again, I would hit them and get nothing, or they would hit me *after* I hit them, and they still got the point.

I tell you, if I had been fencing epee the way I'd been fencing sabre, I would be feeling pretty good about myself right now.  Unfortunately I actually fenced epee rather poorly, so I didn't get very far in that competition either.

The right-of-way thing seems ridiculously archaic to me.  It's supposed to make sure there's actually a bit of back-and-forth before someone makes a hit, and eliminate the "problem" of simultaneous hits (I had a number of those, too), but what it actually does is eliminate a lot of freedom of movement and flourish, and just encourage fencers to jump at each other in a blind panic and hope for the best.

If you don't "have the attack", you've pretty much got nothing.  You can't evade their blade - you must parry (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless you're an epeeist by training and your first instinct is to stand your ground and counter-attack).  And whether you've successfully reposted, reprised or remised is entirely down to whether you successfully stuck your arm or foot out far enough for the judge to notice you rather than the other person.

It all seems so much more arbitrary than it has to be.  The person who would win the fight (if this were a real duel) doesn't win the bout, just because the other fencer has showier leg movements.

I can't help but feel a better solution would be to "eliminate" the problem of double hits by taking the opposite stand to epee.  In epee, if you hit each other at the same time, you both get a point.  In sabre, you could just say that nobody gets a point in a double hit.  And if you want to improve the flow of the game, you could just include a "play-on" rule where the fencers keep at it until someone makes a clear point and the judge shouts "halt!"

And, if we really need an equivalent to the "on the full" rule, then it should only apply to jumps and lunges - and it should really be as simple as "you can't hit the attacker mid lunge or jump; they must land their foot or blade first".  That's not too complicated, and the average joe should be able to keep track of that without years of experience or training.

Beyond that, it should be "whoever hits first gets the point".

That seems fair to me.

Vale Latin?

Latin’s a dead language

As dead as dead can be

It killed off all the Romans

And now it’s killing me

So, here’s something I’ve been wondering about lately:  where are the new novels in Latin?

Where can I find a whodunnit or a tawdry romance novel in the language that forms one of the two key “Ancient Languages” once considered part of every educated person’s repertoire?

People study Latin at universities all over Europe and in various other places around the world.  In some parts of the world, Latin is still taught to children in schools (and, I suspect, Ancient Greek probably is as well, in some places).

You have people who learnt Latin in school, majored in it at university, became so literate and fluent in the language that they went on to teach it and translate ancient Latin texts into modern languages as their job.

So why isn’t writing new works in Latin a thing?  Or, if it is a thing, why is it such a quiet thing?  As far as I know, the only new Latin/Ancient Greek texts that are readily available for public consumption are the Wikipedia pages that have been translated into those languages.

Wikipedia in Latin is awesome, but I secretly suspect it’s more of a hobbyist thing than a genuine attempt to create new texts for the Latin speaking community.

Is there a Latin speaking community?  Can you travel the world meeting with other learners of Latin and get along famously speaking Latin with each other?  Can you have a Latin pen-pal and go to Latin conventions?  Are there Latin rock bands putting out Latin rock music?  And is there a magazine where people contribute articles, short stories and original poetry in Latin?

Somewhere out there, is someone translating modern language texts into Latin?  Surely the same people who write “new translations” of the Aeneid in English can also write “new translations” of Alice in Wonderland in Latin…

Esperanto is doing it.  All of it.  The travelling to hang out with other speakers, the pen-pals and conventions, the rock music, the magazines, the translations of Alice in Wonderland… and the new works.  People have been writing novellas, short stories and poems in Esperanto pretty much since the day it was invented – and there’s a sizable library of crime novels, science fiction, tawdry romance and translations of modern language classics.

If you can build that kind of a community around a created language, surely you do the same for an ancient one?  And wouldn’t Latin have a larger base to build on?  Thousands of people all over the world learn Latin.

It must surely exist.

They say Latin is a dead language – and I think that’s supposed to mean no one speaks it and no one creates new works in it.  But why?  People were writing scientific papers in the language until just a century or so ago.  (Incidentally, where do those papers fit in with the Latin cannon?  Are people still reading them – are they used as texts in Latin classes?)

I bet you $4.50 that anyone who remotely enjoyed taking Latin in either school or university tried writing new poetry in the language.  It may have been crap, but that’s beside the point.

What isn’t beside the point is the fact that I’ve never seen a book of new Latin poetry advertised (and I’m an academic librarian, so I tend to get ads for that sort of crap sent to me).  Surely someone out there kept writing poetry and eventually created a few pieces worth sharing with the public?

What does it mean to be a living language, apart from the fact that people are still using it and playing with it?  If that’s all it takes, why is Latin dead?  Is it dead, or is it living very quietly?

Could we breath life into the old corpse yet?

Ugg.

Why do we assume "early man" spoke in a series of grunts?

Do we have scientific evidence for that (fossilized speech tracts that showed they were incapable of articulate speech), or is it just popular conjecture?

Okay, yes, most of our art was extremely unsophisticated and we left no written records of the time - but wouldn't that necessitate a more elaborate oral culture?

We would have had to speak and sing our culture into being.

Without the written word we would have had to pass our history and culture on from one person to another by telling the stories of our world.  Wouldn't it make sense to assume that the vocabulary used to tell those stories would have been rich and varied?

The minutiae of daily life - the details that kept our children alive - would have been described by one generation to the next.  Wouldn't that old adage about "100 words for snow" apply to almost every aspect of our lives?

Imagine being an early hunter-gatherer.  Every shift in the seasons has a direct influence on your day-to-day life.  The smallest of details in the world around you are worth noticing and remembering - and telling the other members of your tribe.

"Uggs" just wouldn't cut it.

And at night, when it's too dark to do anything useful, you've finally got a few minutes of "down time" from your full-time job of surviving.  There's nothing else to do except dance, sing and tell stories.  You've got rhythm and your voice.

The rap battles must have been phenomenal...

Sabre!

So, it turns out that sabre doesn't make any sense.

I understand all of the pieces that go into a sabre bout... in theory.  But when it actually comes to a bout, it's just a bunch of people who don't know what's happening flailing about with swords and hoping for the best.

Even at the elite level the people in the bout don't know what's happening - that's why they both turn to the judge with "Howzatt!" expressions.  They know someone just won a point, and they're hoping it was them - but they don't seem to actually know.

I was watching some footage from the Olympics earlier, and even in the gold medal match the fencers were all "Yay, I got a point - oh, wait, no I didn't."

Sometimes the judge doesn't even know and just tells them to try again.

I tried a bout for the first time last week, and the girl I was playing with and I kept looking at the judge just to work out why all the lights were flashing.  Turns out I was winning (yay me!), but don't ask me what I was doing.

I had a vague plan (involving a feint-parry-reposte thing) that I sometimes managed to pull off, but most of the time it was just a confused blur of swords and a lot of random flashy lights.

I'm going in a competition Sunday week.

Depending on how many women have applied to be in the sabre comp, I may just end up winning something - which would be the funniest thing ever.

Never underestimate the value of turning up.

Impossible!

I am in awe of impossible pie.

If someone actually said:  "look, just make a custard and chuck in a cup of coconut and half a cup of flour and it will turn itself into a pie..."

Well, that would sound ridiculous, wouldn't it?  Impossible, almost.

But that happens!  You just make some gloop that basically involves putting coconut and flour into custard and poor the gloop into a pie dish, and then physics makes a pie!  The coconut rises to the top to form a crust, the flour sinks to the bottom to form a base, and the custard hangs around the middle for form a filling.

It's amazing!

It's also delicious, and is completely unfazed by replacing the flour with a gluten-free substitute.  I made one on the weekend using a straight swap - half a cup of gluten-free flour for half a cup of plain flour.  You couldn't tell it wasn't made with normal flour.  The magic pastry looked, tasted and felt just fine.

It's magic!  Impossible!  Good.

Siin me oleme (Here We Are)

Siin me oleme

I watched the weirdest movie I have ever seen last week.

It was an Estonian film from the late 70's about a bunch of crazy city folk who turn up at a farm full of crazy country folk and then do nothing at all, really.

It was basically a bunch of sight-gags stretched out into sketches and then stitched together into a plot.

And it made no sense at all.

Things would happen, and there was no reason for them to happen.  Occasionally, this would lead to other weird things happening, but mostly the new weird things were somewhat independant of the old weird things.

Plot lines suddenly disappeared as if they never existed.  New storylines would appear from nowhere.  I found myself constantly gesticulating at the TV saying "What are you doing?  Why are you doing that?  Who are you people?"

There were characters who had no back story.  Of the three city folk who turned up, one was never explained.  She was just in the car with the others, and apparently brought along specifically to be a gorgeous red-head (in a wig).  Who was she?  Was she a daughter?  A sister?  A friend?

Why did she flounce around and flirt shamelessly for the first half of the film, and then suddenly turn into a sharp-witted shrew in the second half?

Where did all the other people on the farm come from whenever an audience was needed for the fat city woman to do something ridiculous?  Where did they all go in the meantime?

At one point I wasn't sure if the farmer's wife was talking to the cow she was milking or the fat city woman.  Then again, the lipsyncing was so bad I wasn't sure who was talking half the time.

And then there were the musical numbers.  They came out of nowhere, lasted for approximately two verses, and then disappeared.  And they weren't like musical numbers you get in normal musicals - where the song expresses part of what's going on in the character's life at that point.  It was more like the characters were just bursting into song because they had a tune in their head at that point in time, and decided to sing it out loud (with magical musical accompaniment).

Much like an average day in office for me, but still a bit weird for a movie.

The whole thing was a bit crazy-pants, to be honest.  Yet strangely compelling.  Nothing much was happening at all, but I had to keep watching to see what would happen next.

Another unnecessary bike...

Can I be considered to have a collection of novelty bicycles if I currently only have two?

Yes, I also have a couple of "normal" bicycles, so I could be considered to have a collection of bikes.  I also have a couple of unicycles so I could be considered to have a collection of novelty cycles.

If you include the Micro scooter, I clearly have a collection of human powered vehicles (although I feel I should buy a trike or a rickshaw to flesh out that claim - or maybe a canoe).

But, novelty bicycles?  I've just got the penny farthing and a folding bike.

Some may not consider folding bikes to be novelty bikes, they're just bikes that do a specific thing.  But seeing as most people who see the Brompton for the first time regard it as a bit of a novelty, I'm willing to say:  folding bike + antique replica bike = almost a collection of novelty bikes.

However, part of me is sure a collection should have at least three things in it.  Which may be one of the reasons why I want this, even though I already have a folding bike:

Or maybe I just want it because it sits in that lovely space between art and bike.

I look at most folding bikes and say "the Brompton has a much better fold", but the IF Mode just looks pretty, so I almost don't care.

Mind, the Brompton does have a much better fold...

I just need to find a spare AU$3000-$4000 to spend on something that's not going to be as good as the thing I already own.