Dog Brothers Public Forum

Grandma stops intruder with garden gnome

LONDON (AP) -- A grandmother stopped an intruder from entering her home by lobbing a heavy garden gnome at him, police said Friday. Jean Collop was woken early on Tuesday morning by the sound of an intruder on the roof of her home in Wadebridge, southwest England.

"I grabbed the first thing that came to hand - one of my garden gnomes - and hurled it at him, and hit him," she recalled.

"He lay there and I began to scream. I went back into the kitchen and found a rolling pin in case he came down. I didn't want to break another gnome."

A neighbor alerted police who arrived shortly afterward and arrested the intruder.

He added: "Our usual advice would be not to get involved, but to contact the police straight away," said a spokesman for the Devon and Cornwall Police.

"We do appreciate that in the heat of the moment people react to that situation, and if it results in a happy outcome that's great."

Dude, I'm on offense, not defense here. Not sure the terms "intelligent discussion" and "Michael Moore" should appear in the same sentence. Can't help but also note that whenever Moore was asked to explain one of the many gross incongruities in his film by less than fawning questioners, his response was always "did you see the movie?" If I went over the top responding to his sophistry in this forum I certainly apologize.

Nope. I'm done lining that boneheads pockets. Seen most of his other flicks and that was enough for me.

Though I have no respect for Moore, I do for Chris Hitchens (see the Hitchen's piece posted earlier in this thread). I note Moore has failed to accept Hitchen's invitation to chat about the film, for reasons that should be clear. Think Moore is he?? on wheels when it comes time to club baby seals in the editing suite, but can't work a room unless packed with cheering synchophants.

As that may be, I 'spose the next question will be "how can you dismiss something you haven't seen?" Tell you what, if you don't ask the question I won't waste bandwidth by listing stuff like Mein Kampf, Ishtar, The Turner Diaries and other supremicist swill, romance novels, supermarket tabloids et al ad infinitum. Lotta crap out there to dismiss out of hand; don't expect me to lose any sleep when doing so.

Michael Moore is a hukster in my book, part P.T. Barnum, part 3 card Monty dealer, part conspiracy nut. Though some attention was paid when his film failed to garner anything at the Academy Awards, until this piece came along I haven't seen much that put it in an empirical and comprehensive context.



April 11, 2005, 8:13 a.m.
Michael Moore and the Myth of Fahrenheit 9/11
He claimed his movie was popular all across America. It wasn?t true.
Byron York



EDITOR'S NOTE: NR White House Correspondent Byron York's new book, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, details how MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, 527 groups, Al Franken, and other Democratic activists built a powerful new network to attack President Bush and his initiatives. One of the key strategies of those activists in 2004 was the effort to create an impression in the public mind that there was a wave of anti-Bush anger sweeping over the country, which would inevitably lead to the president's defeat in last November's election. The following excerpt shows how radical filmmaker Michael Moore tried to make that happen.

In early August 2004, Karl Rove, President Bush?s top political advisor, was having lunch with a small group of journalists at the Oval Room, a restaurant across Lafayette Square from the White House. The talk ? off the record, unless Rove agreed to be quoted ? was about strategy in the presidential race. Was Kerry?s emphasis on his Vietnam record a mistake? Was Bush going to offer a full-scale defense of the war in Iraq? Would he push issues like Social Security reform? After the discussion touched on a number of heavy topics, I asked Rove what he thought of Michael Moore?s blastingly anti-Bush movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. Had it had an effect on the presidential race?

?It?s an artful piece of propaganda,? Rove said.

Was that all? Had he seen the picture?

?I plead guilty to violating the copyright laws of the United States by watching a bootleg DVD,? Rove answered with a grin. ?I refuse to enrich [Moore],? he added, giving the clear impression that he had a rather low opinion of the filmmaker.

With a little more prodding, Rove said he wasn?t worried about the picture and did not see it playing a substantial role in the election. But he had watched it ? at a time when some others on the White House staff were saying they would not see it. Rove was too careful a man, and his mind too wide-ranging, not to want to judge for himself.

Moore would undoubtedly have been delighted by the image of Karl Rove peering at a fuzzy bootleg of Fahrenheit 9/11.What publicity material that would have made! At the time, Moore was traveling around the country, promoting the movie as George W. Bush?s worst nightmare, generating an enormous amount of free coverage in the process. The point ? other than to make money for Michael Moore ? was to create the impression that Fahrenheit 9/11 had touched off an explosion of anti-Bush activism across the nation.

At least for a while, the plan appeared to be working. Fahrenheit 9/11 did an impressive business, earning far more than any other documentary in history. And many reporters and analysts, spurred on by Moore and his publicity team, interpreted the movie?s success as evidence of a deeply felt and growing anti-Bush sentiment among the public, not just in the blue states, where the movie might have been expected to do well, but also in the red states won by George W. Bush in 2000.

But a little more than four months later, after Election Day, things looked much different. Not only had Moore?s movie not propelled the Democratic candidate to victory, but some Democrats wondered privately whether Fahrenheit 9/11 and all the attendant fuss might have done more harm than good. What went wrong?

The answer, although no one beyond a few Hollywood executives, and probably Moore himself, knew it at the time, was that Fahrenheit 9/11 never had the sort of national appeal that its maker and its publicists claimed. The truth was just the opposite; deep inside the dense compilations of audience research figures that are used by movie studios to chart a film?s performance was evidence that Fahrenheit 9/11?s appeal was narrowly limited to those areas that were already solidly anti-Bush.Moore?s daily pronouncements about the movie?s success in pro-Bush areas, and the growing anti-Bush movement it was supposedly engendering, were little more than wishful thinking.

In the end, Karl Rove was right. There was no need to worry.

SOLD OUT IN FAYETTEVILLE
On June 28, a couple of days after Fahrenheit 9/11?s premiere, Moore spoke to thousands of people via an Internet hookup at ?Turn Up the Heat: A National Town Meeting on Fahrenheit 9/11,? organized by MoveOn. ?It was the number-one movie in every single red state in America,? Moore said, as cheers went up in the room in which I was watching with about two hundred MoveOn supporters. ?Every single state that Bush won in 2000, it was the number-one film in it.? The news seemed ominous for the president; a real sense of excitement and hope filled the room. ?I?m sure when the White House read that this morning, that was one of their worst nightmares come true," Moore said.

Press accounts added to the idea that Fahrenheit 9/11 was winning over Bush supporters. The day before Moore spoke to MoveOn, the Los Angeles Times ran a story headlined ??Fahrenheit? Is Casting a Wide Net at Theaters: Anti-Bush Sentiment Runs High at Showings of the Documentary, Which Has Opened with a Strong Box-Office from 868 Screens.? The story began with a woman, a supporter of the president, who had gotten into stinging political arguments with her anti-Bush college student son. The son urged her to see Fahrenheit 9/11, and she emerged from the movie with tears in her eyes. ?My emotions are just...,? she said, unable to continue. ?I feel like we haven?t seen the whole truth before.? The Times wrote of another man, a well-to-do retired insurance agent, who described himself as a lifelong Republican but who, after seeing the movie, vowed to leave the GOP. ?I won?t be voting for a Republican presidential candidate this time,? he told the Times.

Summing up the emerging conventional wisdom, Time magazine wrote, ?You would have expected Moore?s movie to play well in the liberal big cities, and it is doing so. But the film is also touching the heart of the heartland. In Bartlett, Tenn., a Memphis suburb, the rooms at Stage Road Cinema showing Fahrenheit 9/11 have been packed with viewers who clap, boo, laugh and cry nearly on cue. Even the dissenters are impressed. When the lights came up after a showing last week, one gent rose from his seat and said grudgingly, ?It?s bulls**t, but I gotta admit it was done well.?? Calling Fahrenheit 9/11 ?a shaping force in the presidential campaign,? Time wrote that the film was attracting ?the curious, the hostile, the indifferent. . . . [Moore is] doing what he does best ? pestering ? to get them into theaters. And then to the polls.?

As publicity for Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore himself could not have written better stories. And he did seem to write some of them. ?It sold out in Fayetteville, North Carolina, home of Fort Bragg,? he told the group at the MoveOn town meeting. ?It sold out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It got a standing ovation in Greensboro, North Carolina.? In a matter of hours, those quotes found their way into news reports, feeding the impression that Fahrenheit 9/11 was exciting audiences everywhere, made up of all kinds of viewers. And that impression was amplified by a separate campaign, coordinated by MoveOn, encouraging the group?s members to pack early screenings and write pro-Moore letters to newspapers, all of which was designed to create the sense that the movie was a phenomenon sweeping the country.

But was that really true? Certainly the picture had a spectacular opening weekend for a documentary. But Moore always claimed a special status for the movie, that it was much more than a documentary. (He withdrew it from Academy Award consideration in the documentary category, opting instead to position it unsuccessfully, as it turned out ? for a Best Picture nomination.) And as a film phenomenon, Fahrenheit 9/11?s opening was not nearly as spectacular as Moore claimed.

To make a comparison: Which film had a better opening weekend, Fahrenheit 9/11 or Barbershop 2: Back in Business? The correct answer is Barbershop. In terms of opening receipts, Mean Girls also beat Fahrenheit 9/11, as did Starsky & Hutch, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Alien vs. Predator, 50 First Dates, and several others. The year?s big hits, like Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Spiderman 2 all had openings between four and five times the size of Fahrenheit 9/11?s. In the end, Fahrenheit 9/11 had the 32nd-best opening weekend of 2004, taking in $23,920,637 in its first days.

Still, that did not answer the question of whether Fahrenheit 9/11's appeal was nationwide, as Moore had claimed. The reporters and commentators talking about the film could not have known the answer to that question at the time they were confidently asserting that the picture was indeed doing well in red states as well as blue. Sold out in Tulsa? A standing ovation in Greensboro? That sort of thing was anecdotal evidence at best. To learn how well the film really did would take weeks and would require a detailed look at its performance everywhere it played. The newspapers and magazines didn?t have time for that.

But the movie studios did. Motion picture companies keep track of ticket sales data in excruciating detail. For any given movie, they know who bought tickets, where, and why. They do research not just on a national basis, or a market-by-market basis, or a city-by-city basis, but on a screen-by-screen basis. Did Shrek 2 underperform at AMC?s Crestwood Plaza 10 theaters outside St. Louis? They know the answer. Did Mean Girls overperform at Loews Foothills Cinemas 15 in Tucson? They know that, too.

But the public doesn?t hear much about it. Studios routinely release box-office figures ? the numbers are part of the horserace reporting that goes on every opening weekend ? but executives prefer to keep audience information confidential. That information is quite valuable to them for planning a movie?s advertising campaign, as well as mapping out the releases of future pictures and comparing one picture?s performance against another?s. And releasing it would inevitably lead to more questions from exhibitors and the press. Why is this movie doing so badly in Orlando? Why is that picture a hit in Denver?

Looking for answers to similar questions about Fahrenheit 9/11, I came across a source in the movie business who had access to the details of the film?s box-office business, and of other releases? performances, as well. He provided me with an Excel spreadsheet of numbers ? compiled by Nielsen EDI, a division of the famed Nielsen media measurement firm ? which revealed a picture of Fahrenheit 9/11?s performance that bore almost no resemblance to Michael Moore?s hype.

First, a few words about how such figures are gathered. Movie studios divide the nation into about 250 different zones called designated market areas, or DMAs. Some, like New York and Boston, are dominated by one city. Others, like Albuquerque/Santa Fe and Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo, are geographical areas that include more than one town. The markets were originally designed by ACNielsen, which uses them to measure national and local television audiences.

Movie analysts use the same geographic areas, but they do not mark those areas exactly as TV analysts do. West Palm Beach/Fort Pierce, Florida, for example, is the forty-ninth largest television market but the thirty-first-largest movie market, meaning that people there tend to watch a lot of films. New York is the biggest television market but the second largest film market, behind Los Angeles. San Francisco is the fifth-largest TV market but the third-largest movie market.

Also, most motion-picture grosses are measured on a North American basis, meaning they include ticket sales in both the United States and Canada. Toronto, for example, is not included in American television ratings but is the fifth-largest DMA for moviegoing.

One key measure studios apply to a picture?s performance is whether it does better or worse than might be expected in any given DMA. They do that by calculating each DMA?s share of the total North American box office. Los Angeles, for example, accounts for 8.32 percent of the box office for all films, New York for 7.78 percent, and San Francisco for 3.40 percent. If the San Francisco box office for a film accounts for more than 3.40 percent of a film?s total gross, the film is said to have overperformed in San Francisco. If the city accounted for, say, 5.10 percent of a picture?s North American gross, then the film would be said to have overperformed by 50 percent. Studios use those measurements to compare films with one another, and entire film genres with one another. Do action pictures do better in Philadelphia? Romantic comedies in St. Louis? That sort of thing.

Overall, Fahrenheit 9/11 did extremely well in North America?s top eight markets, according to the numbers compiled by Nielsen EDI. The film actually underperformed slightly in the largest market, Los Angeles, down just under 4 percent from the market?s normal DMA share. (That was probably due to the presence of conservative Orange County, which makes up a significant part of the Los Angeles DMA.) But it overperformed in the next seven largest markets. In New York it overperformed by nearly 43 percent; Fahrenheit 9/11 took in 11.12 percent of its total box office in that city alone. It did even better in San Francisco, overperforming by 73 percent, and did above-normal business in Chicago, Toronto (by 79 percent), Philadelphia, Boston (by 49 percent), and Washington DC (by 62 percent).

Fahrenheit 9/11 also did well in Seattle, Montreal, Ottawa, Portland, Oregon, Monterey, California, and Burlington, Vermont. In all, two things stand out from those numbers. One is that the picture overperformed only in blue states, and even then only in the most urban parts of those blue states. And the second is that it did very well in Canada. Fahrenheit 9/11 consistently overperformed in Canadian cities; without that boffo business, the film?s gross would have been significantly smaller than it was.

That?s the upside of the story. The downside revealed by the Nielsen EDI numbers is that Fahrenheit 9/11, far from being the runaway nationwide hit that Moore claimed, underperformed in dozens of markets throughout red states and, most important ? as far as the presidential election was concerned ? swing states. Dallas/Fort Worth, the ninth-largest movie market, accounts for 2.07 percent of North American box office but made up just 1.21 percent of Fahrenheit 9/11 box office, for an underperformance of nearly 42 percent. In Phoenix, the tenth-largest market, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 29 percent. In Houston, ranked twelfth for movies, it underperformed by 38 percent. In Orlando, it underperformed by 38 percent; Tampa-St. Petersburg, by 41 percent; Salt Lake City, by 61 percent.

The list goes on for quite a while: Las Vegas, Raleigh-Durham, San Antonio, Norfolk, Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis, Jacksonville, Flint, Michigan (Michael Moore's home turf), and many others. And in Fayetteville and Tulsa, where Moore boasted that his movie had sold out, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 41 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

Despite Moore?s PR campaign, the data, which the public did not see at the time, showed that Fahrenheit 9/11 had a very limited appeal. Moore?s claim that his documentary was a ?red-state movie? was simply untrue, and all the articles based on its alleged national appeal were, in the end, just hype.

http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200504110813.asp

For an entirely different perspective, check out this:

http://quizilla.com/users/retromex/quizzes/Which%20Napoleon%20Dynamite%20character%20are%20you%3F/

Sheesh . . . when will the folly associated with Tony Martin's ordeal ever end?

March 04, 2005

BBC attacked for paying burglar shot by Martin
By Adam Sherwin, Media Reporter

CRITICISM was mounting on the BBC last night when it was revealed that a burglar was being paid ?4,500 for speaking on a television documentary about the fatal 1999 break-in at the farmhouse of Tony Martin.

Brendon Fearon, who has convictions for burglary and drug offences, was wounded by Mr Martin in the raid on Bleak House, in Norfolk. His accom- plice, Fred Barras, 16, was shot dead.

BBC One was attacked the day after the BBC was told to improve its public service performance in return for renewal of the licence fee. Its guidelines state that convicted criminals should not be paid unless they offer a ?contribution of remarkable importance with a clear public interest that could not be obtained without payment?.

Friends of the farmer said that he had refused to take part in the programme after learning that the producers intended to engineer an on-camera confrontation with Mr Fearon.

Mr Martin was jailed for murdering the teenage intruder but his conviction was later reduced to one of manslaughter.

Mr Fearon was given ?5,000 to sue the 57-year-old farmer but backed down from taking legal action.

Malcolm Starr, a friend of Mr Martin, said that Channel 4 had pulled out of making a similar documentary because the farmer refused to participate.

He said: ?Tony Martin refused any money or to meet his tormentor in a face-to face confrontation. It is utterly disgraceful that the BBC is handing over our hard-earned money to someone who has been in and out of prison his whole life.?

BBC Television said that it planned to go ahead with the documentary next month. A spokesman insisted that the Fearon interview met the strict criteria on payment to criminals. ?It is extremely important that the public hears the fullest possible account of the event that led to the death of a 16-year-old boy and the imprisonment of Tony Martin,? he said.

?Mr Fearon is the only person, apart from Tony Martin, who is alive and a witness to what happened. There is public controversy about householders? rights to protect their homes from intruders.? Mr Fearon?s contribution would ensure that the programme was balanced, the spokesman said.

The BBC has promised to inform viewers when any interviewee has been paid more than ?10,000 for a contribution. Although the sum is less, viewers will be told during the documentary that Mr Fearon had been paid.

Peter Horrocks, the BBC?s head of current affairs, promised last year that the corporation would withdraw from ?chequebook journalism?. He said the BBC had made errors when offering large sums to celebrities such as George Best, who was paid ?25,000 to talk about his alcoholism.

Henry Bellingham, the Tory MP for North West Norfolk, described the BBC?s explanation as ?the most pathetic excuse I have ever heard?.

He added: ?It is grossly insensitive for an organisation that is meant to show complete balance.?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1510372,00.html

Looks like it's time to ban enema bags. . . .


Police: Woman kills husband with Sherry Enema
KHOU - Houston ^  | February 2, 2005 | 11 News Staff Reports

Police: Woman kills husband with sherry enema

12:54 PM CST on Wednesday, February 2, 2005

From 11 News Staff Reports

LAKE JACKSON -- A Lake Jackson woman has been charged with criminally negligent homicide in the bizarre death of her husband.

Michael Warner, 58, died last May but his wife wasn't indicted until last week.

Tammy Jean Warner, 42, turned herself in to Lake Jackson police on Monday.

Police say Warner gave her husband a sherry enema before his death. An autopsy showed he had a blood alcohol level of .47 percent.

Neighbors say Michael Warner had been seriously ill with liver problems and wasn't supposed to have alcohol.

Relatives say the victim had been told that even small amounts of alcohol could kill him.

His widow is also charged with fraudulent destruction of a document. She's accused of burning her husband's will a month before his death.

Warner was released from jail Monday after posting a $30,000 bond.

Something about this story resists analysis. . . .

Robber's gun a deductible expense
By David Rennie in Brussels
(Filed: 26/01/2005)

A bank robber has been allowed to claim the ?1,400 cost of the gun he used as a legitimate business expense.

The 46-year-old criminal was able to set the price of the pistol against his gross proceeds of ?4,700, which he stole in the southern Dutch town of Chaam.

Jailing him for four years, the judge at Breda criminal court reduced his fine by that amount.

The Dutch prosecutors' service said yesterday that the judge had followed sound legal precedents.

Leendert De Lange, a spokesman, said: "You can compare criminal acts to normal business activities, where you must invest to make profits, and thus you have costs."

Therefore drug dealers would be within their rights to claim the cost of a car used to ferry the drugs around, he said.

However, Mr De Lange scoffed at the hypothetical example of a drugs dealer claiming his Ferrari against the proceeds of his crimes.

"No, he would have to prove that he needed the car to transport the drugs and I hardly think he would transport them in a Ferrari."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/26/wexp26.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/01/26/ixnewstop.html

A really tasteless, horribly funny, fake Volkswagen ad. For those of you old enough to remember it, this tops National Lampoon's "If Ted Kennedy drove a VW, he'd be President today" parody.

http://www.boreme.com/bm/JAN05/a/vw-suicide-bomber/fr.htm

Warning: this link involves electronically veiled full frontal male nudity. With that said, I about laughed up a lung when I first saw it. No doubt there is also a martial art application of the intimidation technique displayed here.

http://www.schwartzy.com/videos/basketball.mpg

A new tool has been developed to help the FBI track suspected terrorist internet usage. Check it out at:

http://users.chartertn.net/tonytemplin/FBI_eyes/

This doesn't quite rise to the level of bovine bondage, but is pretty silly nonetheless:


Festive cheer and goodwill was in short supply in Newtown when people dressed as Santa were involved in a mass street brawl, say police.

Officers used CS spray and batons to break up trouble amongst up to 30 people, following Newtown's annual charity Santa run.

There were five arrests hours after around 4,000 Santas finished racing.

Race organisers said if any official participants had been involved in the trouble, they would be banned in 2005.

Those arrested have all been released on police bail while further inquiries are carried out, Dyfed-Powys Police said on Thursday.

A number of others have been interviewed about their alleged involvement in the incident in the town's Severn Street on Sunday, which happened shortly after 2230 GMT.

There's no way people can link the Santa run to the drunkenness and violence that ensued after the race,
AM Mick Bates

Four officers suffered minor injuries during the scuffle and a total of eight were used to quell the disturbance, said police.

Pc Gareth Slaymaker, community safety officer for north Powys, confirmed that many of those involved in the alleged brawl were still wearing their Santa outfits.

"This is the sort of behaviour that gives a well-organised event a bad name, leading to the belief that it is just becoming a beer festival as mentioned in the press a few weeks ago," he said.

"Behaviour like this justifies the reluctance by the police to extend the licensing hours for public houses and bars for this type of event."

Dougie Bancroft, spokesman for the festive run's organisers Dial-a-Ride, said: "The trouble occurred seven hours after the Santa Run and I understand some people involved were dressed as Santa.

"But I'm not sure if they actually took part in the race because Santa suits were left by many in the town's park.

"If we find that people connected with the run, be it marshals, stewards or anyone else, were involved in the incident we will not tolerate them and they will not be involved in the race next year.

"We don't want anything to tarnish the reputation of the event or the charities which benefit from the Santa Run. We support the police in their action."

Montgomeryshire AM Mick Bates, who took part in the run, denied claims that it was turning into a beer festival.

"There's no way people can link the Santa run to the drunkenness and violence that ensued after the race," he said.

"I understand 200 charities will benefit from this year's run and the organisers do a wonderful job planning the event to make sure Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Dial-a-Ride and the charities get the most out of it.

"The problem with excessive drinking is not the responsibility of the Santa run but of pub landlords and individuals."

Last year, runners raised ?80,000 for charities and it is hoped the 2004 total will be higher.

Organisers are still waiting to hear if they have broken the world record for having the most number of Santas in the same place.



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/wales/mid/4081415.stm

Published: 2004/12/09 12:56:35 GMT

I'm still several years away from having to contend with this, but figure it's never too early to start researching how other fathers have dealt with the situation. . . .

Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up.

Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them.

Rule Three: I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose his compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.

Rule Four: I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five: It is usually understood that in order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is "early."

Rule Six: I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven: As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process that can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car?

Rule Eight: The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there are no parents, policemen, or nuns within eyesight. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka - zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which features chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better.

Rule Nine: Do not lie to me. On issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Rule Ten: Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy near Hanoi. When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit your car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car - there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face at the window is mine.

Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac?

He laid awake all night wondering if there really was a dog.

My guess is that there are two prime movers here, albeit ones that work in different directions. The first is modern training regimens. I think it can be demonstrated pretty categorically that human performance in most every sporting venue has improved vastly in the past century. Whether it's sports medicine, diet and nutrition, equipment, training, coaching, and so on, all aspects have benefited from advances that allow athletes to ramp up their performance. I'd argue that enhanced performance leads to enhanced tactics and strategy, hence fighting arts can evolve.

Despite sundry technological revolutions, however, fewer and fewer people able to take advantage of these amazing changes have had to confront the raw brutality of a one on one fight to the death. There was a time when most folks thought nothing of grabbing a chicken from the yard, walking over to the stump, lopping the critter's head off, then watching its body run around the yard pumping blood. Do that in an auditorium these days and people would probably stampede.

In the nasty, brutish, and short days of yore traumatic amputations and grisly deaths were things folks were a lot more likely to witness. A blooded warrior would not have a problem lopping off pieces of an opponent. Outside of modern Special Forces, you'd have trouble finding an elite level athlete inured to violent death, and even elite operators are going to be doing most of their death dealing with weapons that allow them to stand off from their opponents. Bottom line is I think an elite athlete would have the capability of taking one on one fighting in new directions, I just don't think you are going to find many willing to pay the bloody dues these days.

Concern about opening folders quickly and consistently can be addressed the old fashioned way: lotsa practice. Standing around flicking your knife open can get kinda boring; instead I suggest incorporating use of your knife into every daily task you can. Open your mail with it, cut your steak, prune the shrubs, stir your coffee, open boxes, and so on. It won't happen overnight, but eventually you'll find your knife leaps into your hand before you knew you needed it.

As for fixed blade suggestions, sheesh, where to start? A couple notions you are unlikely to hear anywhere else: First, at least initially, don't buy anything you can't toss down a storm drain without losing sleep. Concealed fixed blades are going to be frowned on in most jurisdictions; buy something you won't think twice about tossing in the bushes if you have to. Second, make sure whatever you buy can be drawn and resheathed quietly. If you have reason to draw a knife in combat then you also have reason to do so without telegraphing your intentions.

Beyond that my advice would be to figure out what blade style you favor and then pick up something relatively cheap in that style. Cold Steel has a lot of options in the $50 range. CRKT, Becker, Kershaw, Gerber, also have knives worth looking at. Once you've settled on a blade style that works for you, and if your pockets are plenty deep, there are a lot of folks other there making many amazing knives. Some of my favorites are Strider, Simonovich, Hossom, Terzoula, among others. There is no shortage of options, in other words. The hard part is narrowing things down.

The SERE is single edged; think the term for the beveled top is a "false edge." I own a first generation SERE that I've grown increasingly disenchanted with: some fit and finish issues out of the box, the action never really broke in, too big, and so on. I think Al Mar's quality control over the years has been kind of spotty. I remember a kukri style blade he came out with a dozen or so years back; a lot of people reported blade failures so you don't see 'em around any more.

Sharpening serrations now and again is not really a big deal: ceramic sticks do a good job. Sharpening 'em over time, however, becomes problematic because the more you sharpen the more you modify the lines of the serration. Once you start rounding off the peaks of the serration there isn't much to be done about it besides remachining. As such I don't carry utility knives that are serrated because general usage will cause the knife to be retired sooner that its plain edge counter part.