Sure, they sound melodramatic, cheesy and sentimental talking about their fight club. But at least they're out there doing it, venting, and participating in some mostly rules-free shenanigans.
And "sexually charged" is the condescending weenie's way of simultaneously saying the participants are closeted homosexuals, and that being gay is a bad thing.
Naysayers manage to anger me and tire me out, all at the same time.
> But at least they're out there doing it, venting, and participating in some mostly rules-free shenanigans.
This is unnecessarily dangerous. You can go to a Muay Thai class, train up for a few months and kick three shades of shit out of each other if you want to. The difference is that with experienced teachers who will show you how to avoid injuries, the likelihood of serious accidents goes down.
Exposing yourself to unnecessary risk when you have safe alternatives isn't manly, it's stupid.
> ...participants are closeted homosexuals, and that being gay is a bad thing.
No one said being gay was a bad thing. Repressing gay feelings and letting them out through violence on the other hand isn't so great IMO.
> Exposing yourself to unnecessary risk when you have safe alternatives isn't manly, it's stupid.
Sometimes it's OK to just be stupid, and uneducatedly kick the shit out of each other, as long as cries of "Uncle" are respected. The lack of framework and authority is important for some types of catharsis.
> Repressing gay feelings and letting them out through violence on the other hand isn't so great IMO.
My point is that whenever guys roughhouse, some chronic non-participant will always call it homoeroticism, and since that sounds like a good, intellectual reason to justify their nonparticipation, other bystanders will smugly agree. It's a cheap jab.
> Sometimes it's OK to just be stupid, and uneducatedly kick the shit out of each other, as long as cries of "Uncle" are respected. The lack of framework and authority is important for some types of catharsis.
To each his own I suppose. Actually I felt this when going from Kendo to BJJ. Kendo being a bit more traditional Japanese and regimented. It was incredibly refreshing being thrown into the deep end with seemingly little structure and to train to Cypress Hill and Slipknot.
Still, I'm of the opinion that a bunch of dudes kicking the crap out of each other in a garage is a step too far.
> My point is that whenever guys roughhouse, some chronic non-participant will always call it homoeroticism, and since that sounds like a good, intellectual reason to justify their nonparticipation, other bystanders will smugly agree. It's a cheap jab.
If you think it's OK to just be stupid in this context you have no idea what you're talking about. If they need catharsis, I suggest they beat up a pillow while screaming about their Daddy, or their ex-wife, or whatever their major malfunction is.
It stops being 'ok' and safe when you have a bunch of idiots who don't know what they're doing. For example, when one idiot heel-hooks another idiot and idiot #2 decides to tough it out (thinking a rotational leg lock can be resisted like an armbar for a while), idiot #2 is likely going to spend some quality time with a surgeon. When idiot #3 decides that a crucifix is a perfectly good takedown response because they saw it in the UFC, idiot #4 is going to spend two weeks with a funny feeling in his neck. etc. etc... I can populate this list out to about idiot #20 or so, striking and grappling. There are a lot of bits of the human body that just don't fix themselves; worth thinking about before trying this stuff on.
As for chronic non-participant, well, I've been rolling around in the guard and the mount with other guys since 1995 (Judo, submission grappling, BJJ) without any gay panic. And I've seen my fair share of creepazoid 'fight clubs' where there's 1-2 bigger guys who are (a) rubbish grapplers and (b) strangely interested in rolling with weaker, smaller, prettier guys, so it's not such a 'cheap jab'.
The likelihood of serious accidents goes down, but it doesn't go down to zero.
So choosing a no-rules barred fight club versus a boxing ring is a matter of line drawing, and judgement calls.
Many people draw the line at no fighting at all, and call all boxers "stupid". Is that fair? And if it isn't, why is it fair for you to call Fight Clubbers stupid simply because they're willing to expose themselves to more risk than you?
Fight Club isn't a direct equivalent of Boxing/Muy Thai/etc. with merely added risk of injury.
There are lots of ways to go about free climbing a rock face, and many ways to make it safer or more dangerous. Most climbers I know are extremely safety conscious and go to great length minimizing the risk they put themselves in.
Agreed. My family climbs outdoors probably 150+ days a year, including bouldering, sport climbing, and trad climbing. While I've done some things that some might consider dangerous, it really is about minimizing risk and being in control of the situation. Certainly, it is still dangerous, but, again, much of what we do attempts to minimize the danger.
I am far more fearful when I see people randomly scrambling without any regard for their situation. I've seen people get themselves in really bad situations because they don't assess things and think about consequences.
Sure, but it'd be a hell of a lot safer to climb up the back slope of a mountain or run around the block. My point is that everything has varying degrees of challenge, risk, thrill, etc and these 'fight club' guys have chosen theirs.
> But at least they're out there doing it, venting, and participating in some mostly rules-free shenanigans.
You're obviously starting from the viewpoint that this is a noble activity. That's not necessarily the case. Fight Clubs are romanticized, and who hasn't wanted to try to put one together after watching the film or reading the book, but it's only awesome until some guy shatters a cheekbone or something.
As the saying goes, the only place a gunfight is romantic is in a James Bond novel.
I actually started from the viewpoint that I hate all the hating that goes on around here sometimes, and worked backward from there. I don't feel strongly about fight clubs one way or the other.
Except: the assurance-contract aspect of Groupon is now just an eccentricity. Every deal is designed to hit its target; maybe the businesses get some small peace of mind knowing that they're sure to get X bodies through the door or pay nothing, but the value is all elsewhere, from promotional acumen.
And, the other idealistic parts of Groupon's groups-reaching-threshold-for-collective-action vision mean very little for their overall success, compared to more conventional ideas like great copywriting, being the first mover, having a large incentive-compensated sales staff, having a great name/brand, and so forth.
Say, hypothetically, you discover a long, well-written, insightful and generally intellectual-curiosity-gratifying essay on the craft of programming, titled "10 Ways to Grow Your Penis". Would it be reasonable to editorialize?
> The most dangerous traps now are new behaviors that bypass our alarms about self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types.
The flip-side is true, too: Many of us enjoy coding so much that it feels self-indulgent, tripping the alarm incorrectly. I've often guilted myself out of coding -- out of getting real work done -- because I enjoy it so much. So while we need to watch out for pseudo-work masquerading as real work, we also need to watch out for real work seeming like too much fun.
Unfortunately, coding can be a non-productive use of time. If you're not taking active steps against it becoming so, it is probably a non-productive use of time. This is one of the core insights of the Lean Startup folks that is valuable to all of us: building stuff does not necessarily move the needle for the business, and the difficulty of building stuff bears no relation whatsoever to the business benefits realized by building it.
Sometimes I wonder, though, if methods like Lean Startup aren't solidifications of this very illusion: that just building something awesome and slightly gonzo is too much fun to be trusted. Lean Startups tend to miss things people don't know they want, or that yield negative results when market-tested with crappy prototypes. It's like "Design by Focus Group". It's probably safer. The success rate is probably higher. But I think you pay for it in loss of craziness. At any rate, startups either don't need to hear this, or shouldn't listen to it.
If something is hard to build, it's probably going to be more scarce. That would tend to make the thing more valuable. Your point is good, but "no relation whatsoever" seems a bit too strong.
Just to play devil's advocate (and examine it rationally rather than legally), what exactly is the problem here? Libraries allow multiple people to read the same book. I'm sure you've loaned books to friends. Is it that it's OK for more than one person to read a purchased book, as long as it doesn't happen simultaneously? What if two people read a library book at the same time? Is that stealing? What if this site implemented some DRM that only allowed a book to be read by one person at a time?
This site isn't doing something wrong, merely something illegal.
In Canada at least, you can get a degree in Software Engineering which is aims to teach you the skills you'll need to develop software (not just programming though).
In most European countries too. You can get a Computer Engineering degree, equivalent to an US MSc in Engineering, with a Software, Hardware, Networking or some other topic focus. Mine was Telecommunications :)
These degrees are a mix of various proportions of traditional Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and software craft, depending upon your focus.
Computer Engineering and Software Engineering are two completely different things. SE is "testing, version control, design patterns", but CE is electrical engineering with a few programming classes. (I was a CE major.)
