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F.B.

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Learning Curve

Mainly, but not exclusively for foil Being able to assume en garde correctly. Being able to advance and retreat correctly. Being able to hold one's weapon correctly. Being able to make an extension correctly. Being able to land a touch correctly with one's opponent standing still. Being able to make a parry correctly. Being able to retreat while making a parry correctly. Being able to see an attack coming after it has started. Being able to see an attack as it starts. Being able to parry an attack. Being able to make a riposte. Being able to initiate an attack. Being able to feel the difference between an attack and a counterattack. Being able to feel the correct distance for making an attack. Being able to see an opening for making an attack. Being able to understand priority. Being able to tell the difference between a stronger and a weaker fencer. Being able to finish one's attacks without trying to take a parry. Being able to be patient, not rushing one's attacks. B...
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“Satan, be gone!”

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This is the last post I wanted to write, but it has become clear that if I do not write it, I will never write anything else. So here goes. This time last year I was preparing my file to submit to my department in expectation of being promoted to full professor. I probably don’t need to say any more, you can all check my title on the department web page now—go ahead , I’ll wait—although as one benefit, as part of the review process I did have to write statements about my research and teaching which I have posted on my academic home page as introductions to my method and goals. I got the news—I kid you not—on Friday the 13th. In April. Seven months ago. Since when, I have been living a lie. Or a half truth. Or...oh, fuck it, it sucks. Because it is nonsense, of course. I deserve to be promoted to full professor. I have published a second major monograph  with a prestigious academic publisher (our standard in the department, barring an outside offer from another u...
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Medieval History 101: The Unauthorized Version

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Welcome to my Random Laypersons ! Welcome to the VFM, welcome to the Dread Ilk, welcome to the Reprehensibles, welcome to the Unauthorized , and welcome to the Bears!  This is the History Course you have been waiting for!  Or, rather, it will be, as soon as I get some feedback from you. I was greatly encouraged when Vox asked you the other night about whether you would be interested in such a course and so many of you said, “Yes—as long as it is real  history!” As Fencing Bear would put it, “ Three cheers !”  We are thinking about having a video a week, starting this summer.  The first question that I have is about format. What kind of format would make for a good course online?  What I do not want is to have these videos simply be lectures, the canonical professor-talks-while-the-students-doze lectures you get in the movies before the professor starts encouraging the students to stand on their desks.   I wan...
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It was just supposed to be an interview... A conversation between brothers who have both been on the front lines of the culture war. But then came the quiz... ...with all the answers tending towards one sacred number. At which point the true purpose of the meeting was made clear. “This isn’t an interview.” “This is an intervention.” Milo invites three Catholic intellectuals into a livestream with the Big Bear to talk about the Trinity. Who walks out first?! For wisdom is more active than all active things; and reacheth everywhere, by reason of her purity.  For she is a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emmanation of the glory of the Almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his goodness. —Wisdom of Solomon 7:24-26 And the moral of the story is...? You decide! Preview on YouTube Full episode on Friday Night’s All Right at Censored.TV Unauthor...
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Hot Button Issues, No. 4: Talking Politics

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At all.  As my liberal friends on Facebook have made me abundantly aware these past several weeks every time I have posted even the mildest endorsements of the candidate running against our incumbent.  As my family has made clear as a condition for visiting at Thanksgiving.  Talking politics in and of itself is a hot button issue.  Unless, of course, you simply agree with me. Why should this be?  (I know, it's me being naïve again, but here we go.)  "Don't talk religion or politics except to very intimate friends," or so Lily Haxworth Wallace advised way back in 1941 in her New American Etiquette .  On that count, however, I have no intimates, at least politically.  Or the ones that I do have are all at the National Review .  Plus Barry (hi, Barry!), my oldest friend in the world (albeit three months younger than me), and Prof. Mondo , whom I know only from the blogosphere. And maybe you, if you're reading this now.  (Maybe.)  ...
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