Playing Chopsticks

When I go to Japanese restaurants in the US, I invariably see people grinding the ends of their two separated wooden chopsticks together, some so intensely that I wonder if they are trying to start a fire using the tinder of the nori on their tuna roll.

What do these people think they are doing, if they are, in fact, thinking at all? In Japan, you may rub the end of the chopsticks together briefly and without calling obvious attention to yourself, if there are large splinters which you actually think will get in your food. But excessive rubbing is considered just poor table manners. It is akin to wiping your tableware on your shirt in the US.

I imagine the reason most people get crazy with the chopsticks has little or nothing to do with the functionality of not eating processed wood, and more with the desire to say: "hey, look at me, I think I know something about eating in Asian restaurants, and am going to go way out of my way to broadcast it to the rest of the restaurant through a behavior I myself only vaguely understand." There is a word for this: "Orientalism."

Not only are these people missing the point of the chopstick rubbing in the first place, they are going out of their way to call attention to themselves, which is one of the most foreign things to do in Japan, a society that gives gold stars for conformity, manners and humility.

So if you are going to rub your wooden chopsticks together: do it only if there are big splinters, and be as inconspicuous as possible. Do not hold them in front of your face and go crazy like it is some kind of interpretive dance or sacrificial sushi rite.

Other chopsticks manners to follow if you really want to appear "in the know:" 1) It's ok to pass things with chopsticks, but never chopsticks to chopsticks, and 2) Never stab the chopsticks directly in the rice to rest them -- these mimic the passing of cremated bones and placement of chopsticks in the ashes of the deceased at a Japanese funeral ceremony, and as such are big no no's.

3) When you want to rest the chopsticks, use the small chopstick rest if there is one, rest the business ends on one of your individual serving plates, or lay them flat across a rice bowl. 4) When you are done, you can place wooden chopsticks back into their paper package if you want to be extra fancy.

But when you do these things, do them calmly, subtly and out of cultural respect, and never as a self-conscious braggart, because then you're only showing off what you don't know.

Leave it on the Floor

Watching the amazing NCAA tournament final game, I was annoyed at how the announcers so often went out of their way to mention all the wonderful things the "student athletes were doing off the court."

This young man -- everyone is a "young man" and not a "player" -- is an Academic All American. This young man is active in the community. This young man has a charity fund in his name. It's as if the players need to be doing good things off the court to validate their pursuit of sports. I am sure that, like any group of people, some of them are probably good people, some not so good, some with good grades, some with not so good grades.

NCAA sports exist to foster competition in many of America's great team sports, and equally as sources of funding and prestige for schools that are able to field quality programs. The ostensible balance between these goals and the academic/off-the-court performance of the "student athletes" is one more instance of hypocrisy mislabeled as debate in the US.

When I sit down to watch an NCAA basketball game, I am almost 100% interested in seeing a good basketball game and quality play by talented players (perhaps I am 1-5% interested in the cheerleaders). If I were interested in the players academic performance, I would instead audit their American Lit. class and take notes on their thoughts on Thoreau's concept of solitude as expressed in Walden Pond.

But I am not. I want to see intense, highly organized play, upsets and buzzer beaters. And the NCAA, individual schools and everyone else profiting from the quality of the game knows this (including perhaps Puff Daddy given the pre-game performance...).

I also think this is a perfectly fine objective. The contribution competitive athletes including unpaid college players make to society should never be undervalued. They provide a very, very large group of people with happiness and relaxation through performance arts which I believe will be historically remembered as America's singular popular culture.

At the same time, becoming a professional athlete is one of the most statistically improbable pursuits you can pick, and you have to be a student to be on the team. In other words, most of the time it is in everyone's best interest that the athletes graduate. Is it crucial that they have a 4.0, feed 500 homeless children every weekend and have never drunk a beer to step on a court or field? I don't think so.

Can there be a double standard if the athletes at top-flight academic programs don't have the same grades as their peers? Of course there can be, and there shouldn't be anything wrong with that, as it exists for the non-athletes also. The mechanical engineering student on academic scholarship isn't expected to create millions of dollars in revenue for the school, its sports and academic programs with no compensation, or to entertain the entire student body with hours a week of diligent practice and performance.

Again, there are certainly plenty of athletes who perform well in class also. I certainly know plenty of jocks who are nerds and nerds who are jocks. But the reason they are at the school is often because they are on the team, and this is great. They are doing something wonderful on the team that you and I appreciate. Why can't we just accept it for that?

UFChi

People react quite differently to the phrases "martial arts" and "MMA." Funny just how "mixed" the reaction is actually.

"Martial arts" tends to be taken as something foreign and exotic, curious and perhaps a little strange. "MMA" is seen more as ruthless and haphazard, a competitive and barbarous bloodsport. This I think provokes a sense of bemusement from those who practice martial arts, as martial arts and mixed martial arts are in essence the same thing.

Karate and Kung-fu became popular in the US from the 70s together with Kung-fu movies and stars like Bruce Lee. And while they did gain a distinct following, they never became mainstream in the way American team sports are.

I think this was mainly due to two reasons: 1) their focus on practice and form rather than strict competition, and 2) a general American disdain for things foreign, and especially that viewed as mysticism.

Competition and winning drive US culture. This is the case in business and all of our sports. While athleticism and technique are of course crucial, winning is what matters above all else, no matter how it is accomplished.

For many traditional martial arts such as karate, success is measured by the relative mastery of technique and form, symbolized by the belt system, the advance in which is achieved by diligent practice and is mostly unrelated to results in competition. As I have been taught in my year or so learning muay Thai, even in competition, quality technique is valued and incorporated into the point system.

While any "martial" art by definition developed as a means of fighting, there is also a meditative aspect. Forms, or kata, in karate for example, are intended to remove the awareness of self and bring the fighter into a state of complete concentration, or meditation on the fight. This is known as mushin, or "no-ego" in Japanese. This Buddhist idea of the sublimation of self is inconsistent with the Western idea of winning, which is after all the triumph of ego. Although I do often think of shadowboxing as very similar to kata.

There is also a general tendency in the US to reject Asian cultures and things Asian, probably somewhat as part of our general tendency to reject all things foreign, and maybe more specifically as a result of remaining feelings from the wars with Japan and Vietnam.

Part of this is also a US and Western empirical-thought-driven rejection of anything with even a slight whiff of mysticism. One of the best single examples of this is the idea of chi in Chinese or ki in Japanese, the idea of a life force or energy that is central to all living things.

I can say that it is impossible to make it through even the simplest conversations in Japanese without using the word ki -- it is present in literally hundreds of everyday expressions related to moods, feelings and awareness. In karate, it is used in phrases such as ki o tsuke, literally, to "turn on your ki," meaning to stand at attention at the beginning of class. And so the concept is not at all mystical or strange in Japan at least, but rather part of everyday life.

It is also used in relation to the transfer of energy, or ki from the center of gravity in the midsection to the feet, which then is reflected back through back, shoulder arms and fist and concentrated in the hand to direct energy into the punch. This physical transfer of energy is common to and accepted in almost any form of striking. As a bit of a nerdy aside, this transfer of ki in the form of wave energy, or hado in Japanese, is what Ken and Ryu use to fire off their hadokens in the Street Fighter games (ken is "punch").

So while some elements of chi can be understood in Western, empirical terms, some parts can't, and I think we have a tendency in the West to reject that which can't be understood.

MMA, mixed martial arts, or cage fighting began in earnest in the US with the UFC ("Ultimate Fighting Championship") promotion, which was originally marketed exactly as a blood sport that matched up fighters trained in different martial arts, and some guys who just liked fighting.

After modifying the rules somewhat and acquiring an ownership with a better understanding of US media marketing, the UFC achieved a broad media presence and fan base. But the driving force of its popularity in the US has remained the same, an appreciation for direct, violent competition, often with a clear winner and loser, by a fan base of mostly uneducated, non-practitioners, like the fans of most major sports.

At the same time, the sport has served greatly to identify and increase the popularity of certain martial arts. Certain arts in particular, like muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, have gained a greatly increased following after proving themselves as styles with clear results in the cage.

It is also anything but haphazard. MMA has evolved to require most fighters to have a high level of proficiency in both a striking and grappling art, either of which alone requires years of diligent study that is as mentally challenging as it is physical. It is, rather, beautifully complex.

As someone who has lived in the US and Asia, I have mixed emotions about the popularity of MMA in the US, even thought I am a devout, albeit novice practitioner of martial arts. I like the intensity of the training, the challenge of gaining proficiency, the humility gained by coming to know your own strengths and weaknesses, and the beauty of the physical forms of the arts, even where they are more stylistic than practical. I also find mystical ideas like chi interesting. Most of these are the traditional Asian aspects of the arts.

Because I'm American, I also like competition. I think it feels good to win. And for martial arts to gain any kind of broad popularity through MMA, I also think some amount of showmanship, flashiness and appeal to the fan base is required. Part of this is a focus on results, hence knock-out and submission of the night bonuses, even where they may not necessarily resulted from the best of technique.

I think the above Americanization of martial arts in the form of MMA promotion has been necessary for the popularization of many forms of martial arts, and in terms of results, I feel that is a good thing. I also find the sport exceedingly exciting, and like the competitive system.

At the same time, I feel it's important that people who follow the sport understand at least a bit of the histories and ideas in the different arts, as they are examples of wonderful cultural histories and an opportunity for American to learn about other countries. I also feel the inherent complexity of the sport of MMA and the dedication and discipline its practitioners place into mastering it is something people need to understand that it is not just a cock fight.

Martial arts, mixed or not, are a wonderful thing. They build discipline and clarity of mind, physical and spiritual health, and replace negative habits with positive ones. But the best way to learn about them is not by reading articles or watching them on TV, but by finding a gym or dojo and trying them out for yourself.

e.g. "Laughing out Loud"

In the past week, I have read the phrase "I laughed out loud at" on Facebook from two people I would consider both highly educated and intelligent, which left me to wonder, "hmm, if only there were an easy-to-use acronym usable in informal writing to convey this very idea"...lol

Internet slang, leet, netspeak or chatspeak (e.g. lol, omg, wtf, rofl, stfu etc.) is commonplace, but is it a good or bad thing for the English language?

First, I will say that I generally am for economy of language. Language is how ideas are shared by people, and so the easier it is to understand, the more easily ideas are communicated. As with most things, simpler is easier, and so to paraphrase Einstein, "things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler."

Particularly with academic writing, the desire to sound intelligent (read: "pretentiousness") often trumps clarity, resulting in a smart-sounding yet convoluted result. In other words, bad writing that fails to communicate.

Internet slang was born out of a desire for efficiency, to save key strokes, but is by no means unique in its usage. English has numerous formal contractions such as "can't" and "don't," and particularly in the USA we love our acronyms. As with contractions and acronyms, it simply allows us to communicate the same meaning more easily.

I believe people that don't like it don't because it is not generally accepted as "formal" style, reflecting a general tendency of slang being considered synonymous with stupidity or lack of education by the book-learned. Funny though how for these same folk the above "e.g" and its fellow "i.e." "et. a." "etc." etc. are snootiness merit badges, even though they perform the exact same role as their evil internet speak brethren.

One problem with chat speak is not its usage in and of itself, but when it is used without an understanding of its meaning. I think "lol" has actually acquired nuances in addition to "laughing out loud," such as "please don't take my previous statement in complete seriousness," but it certainly shouldn't be used in place of a period.

Interestingly, the Latin phrases used in their abbreviated form mostly in academic writing are mistakenly used in nearly the exact same way: many people cannot distinguish the usage of e.g. and i.e., much less tell you what they stand for.

The other problem is when slang becomes the only way we know to express ourselves. If you can only express your outrage, surprise, astonishment, surprise, disbelief or shock with the phrase "omg," perhaps it is time to read more books.

But used knowledgeably and where appropriate or funny, internet slang can add efficiency, fun and nuance to English, and I think all of those are good things :)