All of which is to say, the basis of my opinions is a love of the sport, not having been great at the sport. There was no Judo at either Oklahoma State or Iowa, where I went to school, so, with the exception of several months I spent at the National Judo Institute after my freshman year, I fell out of that scene. It’s been about 20 years since I last put on a gi.

Still, the impact on my wrestling was considerable. I became known for foot-sweeps, trips, and some very distinctive throws and matwork. The idea of teaching that stuff to my athletes has been rattling around in my head for years, but the opportunity hasn’t yet arisen. So I started paying attention, and I learned that a number of things had changed since the 1980s.

Some of these weren’t a big deal. Blue gis: weird. Granted, having two guys all in white is needlessly confusing for both spectators and referees… but blue? Black would have had more of the dignity of Japanese martial arts. Now instead of a chess match, Judo evokes Dragon Ball Z.

Koka, the lowest score, went away. I wouldn’t miss it. It’s not like it was part of Judo’s heritage anyway. Fewer land-on-his-butt points won’t kill anyone. Oddly shido, the penalty equivalent of a koka, remains, but no biggie.

Really, really short ne waza (matwork): lame. As mixed martial arts have put groundwork and submission holds in the spotlight like never before, the grand poobahs of Judo decide that it’s time to run throwing tournaments. Good plan.

Most of the new gripping restrictions: annoying, from what I can tell, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to want to comment on them.

Prohibiting leg-grabbing, except as a follow-up attack: bad. Hansoku make for leg-grabbing, except as a follow-up attack: WTF?

Hansoku make is when you’re disqualified from the match. To my mind, getting hansoku make in a single call (rather than having repeated infractions elevated to hansoku make) means you’ve violated the spirit of Judo. It means you leave the gym in shame. The idea that they’re handing this out for (arguably) poor style just makes me plain angry. It takes a lot to draw strong words from me about a sport where I’m now an outsider, but this is a travesty.

There’s a more detailed account of the matter, Hansoku Make, IJF!, by a Real Judo Guy™, Gerald Lafon. There’s also update here, where we learn that players are using these rules to their advantage… which, for some reason, always seems to surprise the people who make rules.

Finally: the apparent lack of Judo tournaments. I used to be able to hit local tournaments around Pennsylvania all the time, and get in a bunch of big ones periodically. The scene seems to have dwindled to a shadow of what it was. I’m told that it’s not just tournaments, and that participation is down generally.

That’s a shame. I have some ideas about why that might be, but if I write them down at all it’ll be another time. The lack of opportunities for competition does really undermine the ideas I was playing with, however. And it presents a sad picture of what opportunities for Judo will be left to my children, in the coming years.

This place has been overdue for some housekeeping, too. I spruced a few things up; now certain phrases will automatically link to Wikipedia entries (which you can trust; Wikipedia is never wrong). The color scheme goes: yellow for local links, blue for Wikipedia links, green for other off-site links. I am entirely undeterred by the fact that no one will ever bother to learn the conventions for this site. It pleases my taste for bright, happy colors.

I also added a wrestling résumé. I needed one awhile ago, so I did my best to recall what the heck I’d done, and when. Since people often need to know some of my accomplishments when I do a camp or clinic, I figured I could send them here. I don’t like going on about my accomplishments, but boasting is rather the point of a résumé, so what the heck.

I really should have some sort of About Me page. This would require thinking of what to say About Me, however, so that will wait for now.

I also fixed various small problems. Despite that I don’t use it for much, I don’t like to have obvious problems with my home page. It’s embarrassing.

The category links at right, for instance. I discovered recently that the Unicode arrow characters were causing spacing problems on certain browsers. For the most part I strongly prefer text to images, but CSS doesn’t let you specify characters as list-item markers, and this was a somewhat ugly hack:

#sidebar ul.children li:before {
content: “\\21B3 \\0020″;
}

As with a lot of other things, though, I finally quit fighting the tide. I made some little images of arrows, and just changed the list-style-image property.

Lots of little stuff, too. I actually considered bringing back some of the stained glass windows from an early version of my home page (again: bright, happy colors), but I haven’t been able to find them in the archives.

Now, I haven’t yet read the decision (it’s 214 pages, and only came out yesterday), but I think I can risk a bit of opinion while it’s still timely.

One of the really interesting things about the case is that Alan Gura, the attorney for the defence, argued for incorporation based on the Privileges or Immunities Clause, rather than the Due Process Clause. Justice Thomas wrote a 56-page opinion “concurring in part and concurring in the judgment”, in support of this. Scalia wrote a concurrence, beginning:

I join the Court’s opinion. Despite my misgivings about Substantive Due Process as an original matter, I have acquiesced in the Court’s incorporation of certain guaran­tees in the Bill of Rights “because it is both long estab­lished and narrowly limited.” Albright v. Oliver, 510 U. S. 266, 275 (1994) (SCALIA, J., concurring). This case does not require me to reconsider that view, since straightfor­ward application of settled doctrine suffices to decide it.

Okay… is the important thing whether the straightforward application of settled doctrine suffices to decide it, or to decide it correctly? In this case, the outcome is indeed the same incorporating the 2nd under the Due Process Clause; but is there reason to think that Scalia would have voted to throw out substantive due process if upholding it meant the opposite outcome? After all, he decided against Raich on the basis of the “quantitative” understanding of the Commerce Clause, and that was the wrong decision from an Originalist standpoint.

There’s a funny thing about stare decisis: if we decide that good judges follow precedent, and bad judges don’t, the law will eventually be decided wholly by bad judges. The good judges can only extend case law, and their decisions will only last until bad judges throw it out. After that, the good judges will uphold the new decisions.

So, what good is an Originalism so faint-hearted that it will decline any opportunity whatsoever to overturn even the worst decisions? What appeal is there in a philosophy which obliges you to make make new bad decisions in order to uphold old bad ones? And how is the Constitution not a hopeless case when its supposed defenders show more devotion to their predecessors on the court than to the Constitution itself?

Geez, willingly deciding cases based on Wickard and the Slaughter-House Cases. If that’s judicial restraint, no thanks.

I’d also do it as an SVG file so I could scale it properly. Possibly I’ll re-do it in Inkscape and update it.

Back when I coached North Allegheny’s junior high team, I wanted to run three full seasons along a similar model. I think the results would have been great. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to make ambitious plans like this happen, even when the athletes are entirely on board.

You dropped a purple ravelling in,
You dropped an amber thread;
And now you’ve littered all the East
With duds of emerald!

And still she plies her spotted brooms,
And still the aprons fly,
Till brooms fade softly into stars -
And then I come away.

Historically, of course, it’s a mess. Teddy Bears didn’t come about until, I believe, 1903. Johannes doesn’t match the rest of the family at all, but he politely pointed out that, “I WANT TO BE A COWBOY!” and “I WANT A GUN!” so accomodations were made. And most obviously, one has to wonder where such a well-dressed, brazenly miscegenous family would actually have existed in the 19th century.

Despite which, this pleases me a lot. In my old age, I occasionally manage to put aside over-analysis in the interest of some silly fun.

It’s a good picture. Johannes seems excessively comfortable with a pistol for a 3-year-old, which appeals to my sense of political incorrectness. Felabi’s outfit looks beautiful sitting; standing I thought it made her look a bit too much like the madame of a bordello. And the more I look at it, the more I think Astrid, who would not wear her hat, looks the best of anyone.

Not that I mind, but I’m pretty shabby. I hadn’t shaved, the fake collar was much too loose, and my coat is rumpled. Along with my dolorous expression, the general effect is of a foppish drunk.

Life goes on. Later we can look at this and say, “There we were.”

Huh? Mother’s Day… Weekend? That’s a special occasion?

I was informed that, yes, it was the weekend during which Mother’s Day fell.

Now, it seems to me that Mother’s Day is a day… else we’d just call it, “Mother’s Weekend.” But to follow this line of reasoning, why had I gone to practice earlier this week? After all, it was Mother’s Day Weekend Week: the week during which that cherished occasion, Mother’s Day Weekend, fell.

For that matter, I hadn’t realized that we were in the midst of Mother’s Day Weekend Week Month. That’s a short step from Mother’s Day Weekend Week Month Year, at which point we males are all tools of the Matriarchy, ineluctably marginalized. And otherness really isn’t my kind of modality.

Needless to say, these points were not well-received, though I did escape to the tournament, liberating my son with me. Today we’re back, and happy to acknowledge that his mom is actually pretty swell (as, in fact, is mine).

Happy Mother’s Day!

Unfortunately, I usually just scratch the surface in these talks. I have a lot of interesting questions and provisional answers in mind.

It’s hard to read in a format which fits well on this page; the full-sized version is here.

This is a song I love, from my favorite animated film, Spirited Away. The writer and singer is Yumi Kimura.