Fencing is obsolete today ! ! !

Today we have GUNS , so we don't need fencing anymore.

I'd take a gun anytime against anyone at 30 feet with only a sword. With a
semi automatic pistol you would be shot dead before you would reach 15 feet.
My two cents on that. However guns aren't that common in the streets even
with their formidable offensive power. So a sword cane would still be a
reliable defence, comming second after running, against a common street thug
trying to hurt you. In case of a stealing I would recomend giving what he
wants.


"Chris Zakes" <moondrgn@earthlink.net> a écrit dans le message de
news:vgq3m01dnaqkhoehse3igak3i3rvulra38@4ax.com...
> On 3 Oct 2004 21:43:32 -0700, an orbital mind-control laser caused
> kaisers_sun@yahoo.com (Brian Raab) to troll:
>
> >Today we have GUNS , so we don't need fencing anymore.
>
>
> "A properly balanced sword is the most versatile weapon for close
> quarters ever devised. Pistols and guns are all offense, no defense;
> close on him fast and a man with a gun can't shoot, he has to stop you
> before you reach him. Close on a man carrying a blade and you'll be
> spitted like a roast pigeon--unless you have a blade and can use it
> beter than he can.
> A sword never jams, never has to be reloaded, it is always ready. Its
> worst shortcoming is that it takes great skill and patient, loving
> practice to gain that skill; it can't be taught to raw recruits in
> weeks, nor even months."
>
> -Robert Heinlein, "Glory Road"
>
> -Chris Zakes
> Texas
>
> They began to plan people's lives and libraries; they
> began to instruct and push about the very people who had
> come to Mars to get away from being instructed and ruled
> and pushed about.
> And it was inevitable that some of those people pushed back.
>
> -Ray Bradbury, "The Martian Chronicles"

"Zebee Johnstone" responded to Chris Zakes's quote of Robert Heinlein:

CZ> close on him fast and a man with a gun can't shoot, he
CZ> has to stop you before you reach him. Close on a man
CZ> carrying a blade and you'll be spitted like a roast pigeon --
CZ> --unless you have a blade and can use it beter than he can.
>>> A sword never jams, never has to be reloaded, it is always
>>> ready. Itsworst shortcoming is that it takes great skill and
>>> patient, loving practice to gain that skill; it can't be taught to
>>> raw recruits in weeks, nor even months."
(Zebee cut this part of the quote, because it disproves her thesis. In the
interest of the truth, I have re-inserted it.)
> > -Robert Heinlein, "Glory Road"

> heh. People quoting Heinlein about manly men doing manly things make me
> giggle really.

A. He is quoting Heinlein's lines attributed to a fictional soldier of the
Korean War, a romantic bored and disgusted with modern war. At another
point, the same character says:
What did I want?
I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques
less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my
sword. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that
lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go
out and break some lances, then pick a likely wench for my droit de
seignoir -- I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my
wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the
Nancy Lee in ythe cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any
movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been
pacing us the last thousand miles.
I wanted thehurtling moons of Barsomm. I wanted Storisende and
Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me "The game's afoot!" I
wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company
with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a
silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and
eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feel of
romance and sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be
what they promised me it was going to be -- instead of the tawdry, lousy,
fouled up mess it is."

Yes, it would be just as easy to prove these thoughts just as irrational as
you did the others, but in both cases the words express real, honest emotion
of a romantic.

> he spun a good story, but he didn't have the experience to back it up.

He was a medal-winning collegiate fencer, with a miltary education
(Annapolis).

> As anyone who has studied Fiore or even Saviolo knows, it isn't quite
> that obvious that the guy with the sword wins.

Neither Heinlein nor his character ever denies that. In fact, in the same
novel, the same character, armed with a sword, says, "I want the
flame-thrower, a bazooka, a few grenades, and the heaviest gun in that
armory."

> Especially if his only
> experience has been with a foil. I'd expect Silver would have something
> to say about trying to spit someone instead of chopping them up too.

Yes -- he'd say it was too Italian. But Di Grassi agrees that you start
with the thrust. It's made clear that the sword in question has an edge,
and the Scar uses it.

> I also find it surprising that Heinlein thought there's some kind of
> distance rule with a gun, it can go off quite happily pressed into
> someone's stomach, no worries.

Heinlein had four years of military training. Closing on a gunman doesn't
appreciably increase your risk; closing on a swordsman does. That's one
reason guns have bayonets.

> Given the amount of time it takes to have a basic clue about how to use
> a sword even inside the salle let alone outside, ...

Note that Heinlein's quote specifically gives this as the biggest
shortcoming of a sword.

> ...compared to how much it
> takes to learn to hit a person sized object spitting distance away, if I
> was worried about killing people I'd take the gun every time.

It depends on the situation. The quote came from a situation in which the
character quoted has just decided to have one person armed witrh a beam
rifle, one with a longbow, and one with a sword. It's in the middle of a
three-quarter page description of *why* one of the three was carrying a
sword, and ends ith: "But most of all (and this was the real reason) to
grasp the Lady Vivamus [the sword] and feel her eagerness to bite gave me
courage in a spot where I was scared spitless. ... If a C.O. needs to carry
a rabbit's foot, he should -- and the grip of that sweet sword was bigger
medicine than all the rabbits' feet in Kansas."

You have been silent on one of the characteristics of a gun in the
quote --"never needs to be reloaded". If he'd had a gun instead of a sword a
few minutes earlier, he might have lost, because he threw many more than six
blows.

In the same position, I would have wanted my sword in my right hand, and my
pistol in my left, but not many people can shoot well with their off-hand.

Zebee, this is weird. You usually try to get your facts straight. What's
going on?

> But for sheer enjoyment, swords rule!

For sheer enjoyment, guns and swords are both delightful.

Jay Rudin, who is experienced and comfortable with both.

Zebee Johnstone and Gary Schmidt exchanged:

ZB> to get over not making it to the real fighting
ZB> in WWII, he was compensating ever after.

GS> Source?

Take away the sneer and what Heinlein called "neo-cocktail party Freudian"
thinking, there's some truth here. His chosen profession was naval officer,
but he was declared "totally and permanently disabled" in the 1930s.

Heinlein wrote, in Grumbles from the Grave, that he felt a strong emptiness
on hearing of Pearl Harbor, because he had no battle station to report to.
Many of his college classmates died there. Unable to go active duty, he
eventually did research in the Naval shipyards, bringing in several other
science fiction writers as well.

> That he didn't mae it to the front? That's a matter of fact.
>
> That he never got over it?

Your wording wasn't "never got over it". He "never got over" the
tuberculosis that disabled him. Your wording was "compensating" -- a
psychoanalytical term no competent psychoanalyst would use prior to many
hours of one-on-one analysis.

> That's my interpretation base don his work, his con appearances, and
> people who knew him.

OK -- I'm curious. What atttitudes do you find in his work after World War
II that weren't there before? I'm reasonably well-versed in his writing,
and the only clear change I can see is that his economic views during the
depression were proved false, and he dropped them.

His first published story about someone who doesn't fit into the modern
world was Misfit, 1940. His first reference to someone who never wanted to
be without a blade even in a modern setting was in Methuselah's Children,
1941, before Pearl Harbor. What "compensation" do you see that isn't
consistent with Heinlein's pre-WW2 characterization of Lazarus Long?

> > And if it's Panshin, don't bother, I lost all respect for him when I
> > learnt that h had a finished manuscript for "The Universal Pantograph"
> > and refused to publish it.

> Which is, of course, nothing to do with his ability to be factual and
> close to reality in a biography.

However, he *wasn't* able to be factual in that biography. He claimed, for
instance, that Heinlein broke off friendship based on political views. He
provided no examples, nor has anyone else. And several people, notably
Spider Robinson, have documented the number of life-long friends that
Heinlein disagreed with.

Jay Rudin

Brian Raab wrote:

> Today we have GUNS , so we don't need fencing anymore.

Agreed. So there is no reason for you to hang around this worthless
newsgroup. Leave it to us atavistic types who perversely choose to do
things that aren't needed, simply because we enjoy them.

Jay Rudin

Well said. However, if he havn't been there we would have such an
interesting discution. So I think he may stay, and maybe he's gonna try
fencing and get addicted to it. Then when his girlfriend leave him, he lose
his house (due to the travelling costs of tournements and equipment) and he
find that the only thing left to him is fencing .... Then he gonna start
loving it even more






"Jay and Diane Rudin" <rudin@ev1.net> a écrit dans le message de
news:10m5ismladjj44b@corp.supernews.com...
> Brian Raab wrote:
>
> > Today we have GUNS , so we don't need fencing anymore.
>
> Agreed. So there is no reason for you to hang around this worthless
> newsgroup. Leave it to us atavistic types who perversely choose to do
> things that aren't needed, simply because we enjoy them.
>
> Jay Rudin
>
>