The Way of Least Resistance

[Warning: this article contains a graphic image which might distress some readers.] Introduction In modern times it has become fashionable to regard the traditional martial arts as ineffective against knife attacks. And yet if you look at the techniques in traditional forms, I believe you will find plenty of realistic knife defences . This should not be surprising: traditional fighting arts are, after all, principally  civilian defence systems . And throughout history, in every culture, knife and dagger attacks have remained relatively common in civilian society - precisely because knives (or similar bladed tools) are so ubiquitous: We have used them in our daily lives for thousands of years, be it in hunting, skinning/scaling and gutting, cooking as well as general utility.  (There is a reason that the Swiss Army Knife is first and foremost a knife - not a screwdriver, saw or file etc.) At the same time, the knife has enormous advantages as an instrument of civili...

π is of course the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It is an irrational number – which is to say it cannot be expressed as a ratio of 2 integers. Yes, we commonly see it rendered as the fraction 22/7. But that is an approximation only. π is a number that has unlimited decimal places; its decimal expansion never ends or repeats. I always found the term “irrational” to be wholly fitting. Here is a universal constant that we cannot even express as a fraction. It defies our everyday “logic”. Yet its existence is a matter of fact. So how was π discovered? How does one stumble across a constant that is “irrational” in this way? The answer is, through experience ; you take a circle, measure the circumference and its diameter and go from there. If you do it accurately enough, you will always have the same result: π – a constant that defies our everyday “rationality”; one that is derived experientially. This got me thinking about the brouhaha surrounding Lyoto M...