Burkini

When I was younger, a very common form of female headwear was the kerchief. They were ugly things, sometimes filled with grossly lumpy curlers, but most often not.

As horrid as they were, nobody tried to pass any laws banning the wearing of the kerchief in public. In fact, it is still perfectly legal to wear the horrid things.

Several European countries have started banning the wearing of garments called birqus (birkas) and hijabs. They also cover a woman's head, although there are no plans institute laws restricting other forms of head wear.

What's with that? Let's put several women side-by-side in one of these female-headwear-restricting countries. Let's put one in a kerchief, one wearing a hijab, and the third is an old-school nun in full regalia. Only one is breaking a law. What if our evil lawbreaking woman is standing there wearing her hijab, and a man were to wear the exact same thing and stand beside her? Again, only one is breaking the law.

I have nothing against stupid laws as long as they make sense in all contexts. What is it about muslim headwear that drives people ballistic? It cannot be the simple act of covering one's head. There is plenty of that throughout western culture.

Some of the legislation refers to the garments not promoting a secular society. What the hell does that mean? If I wear a baseball cap am I promoting a secular society? If it just means religious headgear, shouldn't it also be applied to orthodox Jews, or Sikhs? And why headgear? What about other religious clothing? Nobody is going after fully-rigged Catholic priests, or monks, or Popes.

There are also laws being enforced against women swimming on some French beaches wearing head-to-toe swimwear. These garments were designed for Muslim women who want to swim, but not in a fashion that they consider being almost naked. The outfits look quite similar to what a modest woman might wear to do yoga, with the addition of a hijab.

A number of women have already been fined for wearing one of these burkinis (a cute nickname). I think they should just wear baggy yoga clothing, or jeans, and a hoody rather than a hijab. Perfectly legal. Again, I wonder what would happen to a man wearing a burkini.

I suppose some people confuse the issue of female Muslim clothing with that of people going around masked in public. If that is the problem, all the anti-hijab and burkini-banning stuff should stop. Only a very tiny minority of Muslim women in Europe go veiled in any form. Most estimates put the number at a few hundred in France, and a few hundred in Germany; the most ban-focused countries.

If that is the problem, then a simple solution would be to ban any form of face covering for everybody, or to regulate it in a uniform fashion. I think that if a few Muslim women are harming western society by wearing veils in public, one should consider the horrors perpetrated by clowns, and dare I say, mimes. What about costumes? What about ski masks? A lot more crime has been perpetrated by people wearing ski masks than veils. Ban ski masks, I say.

The entire idea is totally counterproductive.

The complaint against the conservative clothing is that it is somehow divisive. This is a very strange argument to make, as nothing is more liable to piss somebody off than telling them what they can and cannot wear.

Conversely, several other western nations are trying to be more inclusive regarding dress. In Britain, police officers can now wear official hijab headgear. Canada has also followed suit. The reasoning follows that of the earlier 1990 decision to allow members of the RCMP to wear turbans instead of the traditional stetson.

At that time, Canada's national police force was overwhelmingly white in membership; so much so that it hindered policing in ethnic communities. Not allowing turbans for Sikh Canadians effectively banned them from participation.

There is currently a need for better policing in Muslim communities, and allowing the uniform changes only make sense if they encourage more of the community members to become involved.

Perhaps I have drifted a bit from the original topic of bans on the hijab and the burkini, and should get back to it.

Let's assume the anti-hijab and anti-burkini folk are right, and that there is an epic battle brewing between the west and radical-Islam. Who would be our most valuable citizens, person-for-person, in such a struggle?

Let's look back at a time when the West squandered the most valuable human resource they had available during a time of total war.

During the Second World War, both Canada and the United States gathered up their citizens of Japanese ancestry and locked them away in concentration camps. The West was at war with Japan, and feared this segment of their own population. As a result, we locked away between one and two hundred thousand of people, 62% of whom were citizens. When the United States finally allowed Japanese-Americans to help the war effort, it was by using them exclusively to fight on the European front.

This was an incredible waste of expertise in the Japanese culture, language, history, and mindset, not to mention a huge injustice.

It would not be wise to alienate members of the Muslim community, especially over something as trivial as interfering with what they want to wear. There is no upside. If a burkini ban is successful, all it will do is to effectively ban the women involved from going to the beach. What does that achieve? The downside is that many Muslims will feel persecuted, and excluded from society.

Don't ban the hijab, I say. Ban the kerchief instead.

Or better yet, ban nothing at all.

Discovery

I am off Jiu-Jitsu for a week, but the period following that will be especially rich in training.

It starts on Saturday, with a seminar in North Vancouver by Ryron Gracie. That's four hours with a genuine Jiu-Jitsu genius.

Then it's back home, and facing a week of closure at our local academy. The good part is that a friend Koko will be home from university for a week. She's as much of a mat rat as I am, so there is a strong probability that we'll train daily for a couple of hours. It's really her call, as I'm always thrilled to get any partner time at all.

On top of that, Tawha is working on a technical exam, and won't be wanting a full week off. I bet she'll want to do a few morning drill sessions.

So, the week of school closure will have up to 25 to 30 hours of training. That's considerably more than double what is available when things are running normally.

It is also actually better training, hour-for-hour.

Don't get me wrong, our training is fine, it's just that this will all be better.

Let's look at a normal week of classtime. There are 3 hours of beginner classes. Nothing in this training spurt will be beginner stuff. There are also 2.5 hours of open mat, which is sometimes good, and sometimes sees me alone on the mat, working solo.

Of our normal 3 advanced classes, there are 3 hours of training, and 1.5 hours of free-rolling. The free-rolling is super. Of the training time, about two thirds is dedicated to review, which is fine, but it's review. Of the remaining hour dedicated to new material, at least half gets used up by demos. That leaves us only 30 minutes a week actually doing challenging training.

This coming week will be very different.

The first part will be four hours of intensive seminar training lead by Ryron Gracie. There will not be any review, or beginner stuff; all will be challenging and intense.

Then there will be the times that Tawha wants to get together in the morning to work on her test. For me, it is review, but I am also the tutor, and am depended on to find and correct any errors in either of us. For me, it is the most valuable review there could possibly be. By the end of each session, we will have completed hundreds of repetitions, and will be bathed in sweat.

Even better will be the sessions with Koko. We work together on the most advanced stuff we have, and add in more from videos, and from my Los Angeles notepad. We examine it, drill it a bit, and then try and make it both work and fail at the same time. The Gracies say that you can only be taught half of Jiu-Jitsu, and that you have to discover the rest on your own. We will be doing precisely that.

I hope I've made it clear that I'm looking forward very much to this weird week on the mat.

When it has passed, training will return to normal. No seminars anywhere on the horizon, and Koko back in the city. Tawha will still be here, but her test will soon be ending.

The residue will be improvement in those of us who had been involved.

Medical Bills

The Canadian Health Care system is always under attack.

Our American neighbours are forever pointing to wait-list horror stories as proof that our system is on the verge of total collapse, and critics at home advocate increasing for-profit privatization as the only solution for our woes.

Give me a freaking break.

Let's looks a few indicators of success or failure in health care. I gleaned all these figures from the site nationmaster.com, and they get their data from the American CIA Factbook. This is not left-winger data in any way.

Let's look at life expectancy, infant mortality, and hospital beds per 1000 citizens, and compare them between Canada and our southern neighbour.

Life expectancy at birth;

Canada 81.07 (we live 2.43 years longer)

USA 78.64

Infant mortality per 1000 births;

Canada 4.82

USA 7.0 (45% higher)

Hospital beds per 1000 citizens

Canada 3.7

USA 3.3 (10.8% fewer)

Doesn't all that look interesting; but at what cost? Everybody knows that our publicly-funded system must be massively bloated. Indeed, per person, it costs us $1826 per year, and that's not all. We also average $709 per year of private funding. Our total bill is $2535 per person.

Sounds like a lot, but what do they pay in the USA? Surprisingly, they spend more per person on public health care funding than we do in Canada. They spend $2051. That's 12% more than we do.

Then, of course, there is the bill for their private sector medicine. That comes to another $2580 for every man, woman and child. That's more than is spent in-total for all medicine in Canada. Their total private-plus-public funding costs them $4631, which is over 82% more than it costs in Canada.

Do the earlier figures on life expectancy, infant mortality, and the number of hospital beds the funding provides seem to indicate that they are using all that money wisely?

I would say that they indicate exactly the opposite.

However, it is true that we have wait lists in certain categories that are not being adequately addressed.

Here's my solution. We should increase the amount we spend on publicly funding of healthcare. For the sake of argument, let's say we increase it to the same level that our good neighbours spend on their own public system. If they can afford to spend 12% more than we currently do, surely we can increase funding to that same level. That would do a lot to clear up those unfortunate wait lines.

There are many things that the USA does very well, but health-care funding isn't one of them. Copying them in this field isn't the way to go.

Hairy

Somehow, our society seems to be cruelly oppressing women by shaming their body hair.

OK, I suppose looking at this we have to examine the issue more closely. It seems to involve the pressure women feel to shave their legs, armpits, and other bits.

It can't be about the actual act of hair removal itself. Sometimes I need to remove hair off of my legs to facilitate bandage adhesion, and it is totally painless; no discomfort at all. In fact, it is the least painful body hair removal I've ever experienced.

However, I am a man, and clearly know nothing about shaving.

Let's ignore the fact that at my age, and after shaving almost every day since I was about 18, that I have shaved my face about 15,000 times. Male facial hair removal is not comfortable.

I have used many, many types of both blade and electric razors over the years. Cheeks are no problem, but the neck is quite a different issue. It is more like scraping off the hair. Electric feels the better of the two, but still requires grinding a rough instrument against the skin with considerable pressure.

Then, of course, there is the cutting and bleeding.

It is a very different sensation than leg shaving.

For fun one time my wife wanted to try shaving my face. As an experience leg shaver she was confident she knew what hair removal was about. She damn near hacked off my neck skin completely. It was like she was in a race, and determined to get every hair quickly to earn a gold medal. I stopped her immediately, my arms flailing in pain.

OK, so shaving is not physically pleasant for men, but at least we are not forced into it by societal pressure.

Facial hair fashions some and go. Currently, things are somewhat beard-friendly, but this hasn't been the norm throughout my 60 years of life. Although many people always say beards look fine, this is from a distance.

A strong majority of women clearly prefer men to be clean-shaven when dating. Most also prefer this to continue during long-term relationships. There have been many studies done that support this view; Google it yourself.

In a big study (100,000 men) on Tinder, it was found that clean-shaven men had a 37% better chance of finding a match than bearded guys did, and a 74% better “like” rate in general (right-swiped). A number of the bearded men then shaved, and posted new profile pictures, and their “like” rate went up instantly by 19%.

On a recent survey of University women, close to 90% stated they found clean-shaven men more attractive. This study was done in our current, pro-beard-fashion era.

So, although it is uncomfortable, and a daily chore (sometimes twice daily), single men seeking women would be crazy to choose having facial hair.

Why do I still shave, although long-married? I do it because my wife prefers me clean-shaven.

Societal pressure makes me shave, but could I not buck the trend, and go hairy anyhow?

I could, but after so very many years shaven, the face in the mirror is the one I identify as me. A bearded look would be different. This is somewhat paradoxical, as I do have facial hair, and a hairy-looking me would actually be closer to what I am actually supposed to look like.

I have altered the appearance of the part of my body which is most-closely linked to “the self” in order to succumb to outside influences.

Compare that to removing hair from a limb, or an armpit.

And how about the chore of it all. If I were a woman, of the same age, and had shaved once per week (which a casual Google search says is an average) it would have involved 2,184 shavings as opposed to 15,330.

But perhaps this isn't all about legs, and armpits. Maybe it's about the current mania for pubic hair grooming. Maybe somehow that is even more demeaning than scraping hair off of my neck.

My opinions on this might well be biased. Should I be a young, single fellow, and an encounter with a young lady should reach the stage of revealed pubic areas, it would not matter all that much if the woman involved were shaved, or partially groomed, or was natural, or even had her pubic hair done in little ringlets.

Conversely, if doing something to my own pubic zone would actually make that area appealing to women, I would do so in a flash. Blonde? You bet. Shaved? Be right back. Dreadlocks? That will take a little time.

My overall conclusions are totally my own. I do prefer hairless legs and armpits on women, but certainly don't think that my opinion should have any influence at all on anybody, not even my wife.

Any societal pressure felt by women on this subject are just as greatly felt by men. Like any such group-think, it is certainly fine to resist, but there might be consequences (such as hairy guys being considered less attractive), and that a resistor will have to weigh that.

And speaking of societal pressures about hair; why is male back hair so universally gag-worthy, or nostril-hair overflow, or bushy ears?

My Spot

I like my spot in Jiu-Jitsu. My Purple Belt promotion happened six months ago, and any motion up to Brown Belt is a minimum of three years in the future.

As a satellite school of The Gracie Academy, we have a very precise curriculum to operate with. In our advanced group this consists of three levels of material. We do it in repeating cycles that require over a year to complete.

I've been through the base level of material three times already, and am on my second time through that of the second tier. This doesn't take into account the many times I've done review of it all on my own. For me, the only new stuff is the third-level techniques that have only freshly been made available.

Let me describe a typical portion of a cycle where we address a particular sub-set of the material. Right now we are doing this with the Guard chapter sweeps, so I'll use that as an example.

In the first curriculum level there are two techniques, and at level two there are two more, and at level three there are three. We spend one class on each of these. That means for me I will be having four classes of review, followed by three of newer material. Most of the sub-sets are even more heavily weighted towards review.

Don't get me wrong; I love review. However, doing such a large percentage of our work on older stuff means that I have plenty of energy to work on other things. In addition to all the class time, I will also have attended 2 open mat sessions per week. What should I pour over there?

I have started to mix things up with my training outside of class. I work on things that we did down in LA that I've largely put aside, and have also started perusing assorted online videos that address particular questions I have, or on my weaknesses.

I also try developing smooth transitions between techniques. This is very hard for me, but always worthwhile.

Another component of my role here is to be a resource person for the Blue Belts.

Every so often one of them gets ambitious, and decides to put in a lot of extra work preparing for and performing optional technical exams. To do this, they need a partner; preferably one who has gone through the process several times. This is me.

I get a lot more work (also review) out of the process, and act as both a training partner and tutor.

Sometimes somebody just wants to work on “stuff”, and again I am happy to meet up with them and train.

And then there are the White Belts. Their class can always use extra experienced hands. I'm always present at their classes, too.

In all, I am on the mat for approximately a dozen hours a week. This also requires about half as much time spent driving back and forth. I can do all this as I am a happily retired gent. Jiu-Jitsu is sort of my job, although it is never drudgery.

It all adds up to being a lovely phase in my Jiu-Jitsu journey.

And Ryron?

One of my little priorities lately has been to complete the requirements for my next Jiu-Jitsu promotion as soon as possible.

My minimum time requirement will roll around on October 26, and I have been trying to collect all the attendance requirements by that date, or as close to it as possible. I've missed a lot of training, but it looked as if I would just make it on time with some extra effort, private lessons, and some juggled holiday dates.

It was a fragile construct at best; easy to damage with any sort of lost injury, or illness. The plan was as optimistic as possible, and had absolutely no slack in it whatsoever.

With all that in consideration, it was all going remarkably well.

Now, it has turned out to be impossible. Changes outside of my control in two upcoming circumstances will move my completion date back considerably.

The first is our school's annual summer closure week. The decision as to what the dates would be was very late in coming. My wife and I wanted to visit good friends up in Vernon, and had to commit to that several weeks ago. I put that trip into what I thought would be the most likely Jiu-Jitsu closure dates. It turns out, I guessed wrong. Now, I will be home when the school is closed, and away when it is open.

Suddenly, my completion date moved to November 17; a three-week difference.

The second changed circumstance is an upcoming Ryron Gracie seminar in Vancouver. It might still turn out OK. I had it all figured into my dates, but have been unable to reserve a spot.

The usual online booking system doesn't even mention the event, and several attempts to contact the hosting school have not been answered. If I cannot attend, my completion date moves even farther away to November 29.

What this all tells me is that I cannot lose focus, and must attend every possible class. A little more slippage, and my requirements won't be completed until into December. If something keeps me from finishing by the two-week Christmas closure, it means not being done until into the new year. That would be almost 3 months late.

What this also tells me is that I cannot let things get to this state again. If I'd figured it out a couple of months earlier, damage control could have handled things easily. Whatever my promotion date turns out to be, I will do a comprehensive prediction of the training situation leading to the one after. All known school closures, and holiday plans will be figured in. In fact, that is already done, except for knowing the precise dates involved. Within any likely range, it looks fine for an on-time next completion.

Of course, if I'm late a couple of months this time, the next will also finish late by a corresponding amount, and the next, and the next....