Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 July 25

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July 25

MMA for Self Defence

I am interested in self defense. So far there are numerous martial arts available out there. I found that Mixed Martial Arts are performed in cage as a sport or entertainment purpose. Google search shows confusing thoughts regarding this issue. Some agree and some disagree. As for self defense is MMA appropriate in street fighting. Since it's a fighting system that kick, punch and grapple. Any suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks in advance--180.234.245.137 (talk) 01:35, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

While MMA fighters do come from a variety of disciplines, I believe that MMA has strong ties to Brazilian jiu-jitsu which is a self-defense martial art. --Jayron32 01:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• • Are you implying that Brazilian jiu-jitsu is far more effective than MMA in self-defence? I know that it's part of MMA. What I am trying to say that is MMA, as a whole system effective for unexpected street fight or self defense?? Thanks--180.234.240.213 (talk) 17:47, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
    • MMA is not itself a specific, well-organized discipline. As the name implies, it is a set of related competitions of combat fighting, with a looser set of rules than most combat sports, to allow for competitions between people from different fighting traditions. The idea is to allow Marquess of Queensbury boxers to compete against Thai kickboxers, judo fighters, karate fighters, etc. in a single competitive structure. Over time, recently, there have been some training programs that specifically train "MMA", but basically these are modified forms of other, more well-developed martial arts traditions. --Jayron32 01:55, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

In my opinion MMA is not the right set of skills for self-defense. It is focused on aggressive actions rather than defensive actions. In some cases the best defense is a good offense (as the saying goes), but that doesn't apply in general, especially if you are smaller than your attacker. Also MMA has rules against some of the most effective defense actions, such as kicking the attacker in the balls; and the use of gloves makes other actions, such as eye strikes, ineffective. Looie496 (talk) 18:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, there's quite a controversy about the gloves in MMA lately. Many are calling for redesigns, because the open finger style is making eye pokes too easy, even by accident. I don't have the numbers, but I watch all the shows, and virtually every one has at least one match (often a few) with some sort of eye poke spoilage. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:52, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

See, Krav Maga. There are certain martial art forms not used in competition precisely because used effectively they are not harmless. As a side note, weaponless self-defense against an armed offender is never a good thing. Shadowjams (talk) 04:51, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

But in every bad movie I've ever seen you can count on the armed bad guy to step too close to our hero, who then takes his gun away from him. StuRat (talk) 09:49, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Self-defense is your starting article for your options and ramification of self-defense. OsmanRF34 (talk) 19:54, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

• • Thank you everyone :)--180.234.24.253 (talk) 15:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

As Looie touches on, if you fight strictly by the MMA book, you're cheating yourself out of these moves. Many of these are exactly what you're looking for in a life-or-death struggle (well, except timidity).

And as Jayron points out, MMA is a mix of whatever isn't on that list. There's a ton of room for improvisation and innovation. That said, training at a good MMA gym will teach you a lot of useful skills from many disciplines, as well as keep you in the physical shape to use them (and the "dirty" moves) most effectively if you must. The high-level gyms are quite expensive, though, so it's not a wise investment if you're just using it for non-professional reasons.

As Shadowjams notes, a weapon is probably your best bet (most regular criminals have at least one), if you know how to use it (safely, effectively and legally). If not, you could be in far worse trouble than you started. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:46, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Nightsoil

Hi - I'm looking for info about the trade of the nightsoil man, erstwhile of the backstreets of Australia - can't find anything at the library, and little specific to Aus - can anyone help?

Thanks

Adambrowne666 (talk) 03:00, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

You don't mention whether you've looked at the night soil article, but it does mention countries other than Australia, and does include references that may help you. Mitch Ames (talk) 04:28, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I immediately thought, I know what you mean by nightsoil, but I don't remember anyone actually calling it that when my family's house was a client of such a service. So, I went to Google and tried "dunny cart", the name we kids used for it, and had some definite success. So, give that a go. Also, while obviously a novel, Frank Hardy's "Outcasts of Foolgarah" is all about a gentleman in that profession. Could give you some valuable insights. (And it's hilarious!) HiLo48 (talk) 05:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Beauty, thanks, both - didn't think of dunny cart - I just remember the terms nightsoil man and nightman from my parents' stories - will check it out, and the Frank Hardy novel too, if only because I have a crush on his daughter.Adambrowne666 (talk) 08:25, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Dunny (more Aus specific) and Outhouse (less so) also have useful information. Toilet also mentions the dunnyman (also spelt "dunny man"), which I think is the more colloquial Australianism for a person in the occupation you describe. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 08:35, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Do you perhaps mean his grand-daughter, Adam? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 08:48, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

(ah yes, thank you, Jack - silly me - have you seen, by the way, the photo Marieke did parodying one done by Derryn Hinch in the '70s?) Adambrowne666 (talk) 09:31, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

(No. Where would one see such a thing? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 11:57, 25 July 2013 (UTC))

Try this. (Warning to the sensitive: Nipples!) HiLo48 (talk) 12:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Hm, apparently I move in different circles. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:27, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

For some comparative terms, ca. early 1940s: The U.S. English jocular-euphemistic term "honey dippers." I heard this from my dad relating to his US Army service in WWII, either during infantry training in the South, possibly latrine duty in the Pacific Theatre, or in Japan for six months at the war's end. Another term from Yiddish or Polish, same period: Lodz ghetto Jews were put to work as "fekalists" pushing wheeled collecting tanks through the streets for manually clearing out residential cesspools (see stills in the Ghetto Fighters' House photo archive. -- Deborahjay (talk) 09:08, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Deborah - your info confirms by feeling that if I strike a good vein, I'll end up with a wealth of fantastic cultural stuff - certainly a short story's worthAdambrowne666 (talk) 09:31, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Downloading data about wikipedia

I would like to know if there is a repository from where I can download some data related to wikipedia. I would like to have a database of the various links or articles that one article on a wikipage leads to. For example the wiki article on Physics leads to an article on Classical Physics. Classical Physics in turn leads to other wiki pages like General Relativity. Some pages may have a link back to the original page as well. It will be great if I could get a list of these connections of wiki articles. 128.151.144.133 (talk) 04:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

You can download the entire text of Wikipedia in several formats - without the photographs it's actually surprisingly small, just a few gigabytes. You can find information on how to do it in WP:DOWNLOAD. SteveBaker (talk) 04:23, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

If you only need to make limited queries, Wikipedia:API might be useful. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 12:51, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

You can download old link data (2010 version) here: http://haselgrove.id.au/wikipedia.htm. For the most recent data, enwiki-latest-pagelinks.sql.gz (5 GB) and enwiki-latest-page.sql.gz (969 MB) from http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/latest/ see the first site for the content of those files. Ssscienccce (talk) 15:52, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Piers and Beaches

After being on Brighton Pier recently, I have come to wonder, why do there appear to be so many more piers in England than in Scotland? All the Scottish piers appear to be tiny boat jetties which have no arcades or amusements on them. This makes me wonder, what do Scottish people do at the beach if there is a massive lack of piers? In general, Scottish seaside resorts seem to be much less numerous, population and land size considered. Is there anything different about the weather and why? After all, no Scottish cities are seaside unlike England. Ireland appears to be similar. 92.0.106.168 (talk) 13:25, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Aberdeen and Edinburgh both have beaches. Pleasure piers are rare outside England and Wales, yet people around the world find plenty to do at the beach. Warofdreams talk 13:42, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

According to that article: "...the large tidal ranges at many such resorts meant that for much of the day, the sea was not visible from dry land. The pleasure pier was the resorts' answer, permitting holiday makers to promenade over and alongside the sea at all times". Therefore, if the beaches are steeper, so that the tide doesn't go out as far, then the need for a pleasure pier is eliminated. Are Scotland's beaches steeper ? StuRat (talk) 14:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

What you say is partially, but not entirely, the case. The National Piers Society lists 99 existing or lost piers in the UK, only 4 of them in Scotland. Scotland generally has about 10% of the UK's population, so that means per capita Scotland had about half the number of piers you'd expect. Part of the reason is surely that the south coast piers, which can rely on a longer season, are in resorts that are more economically viable. But we can also attribute some of this to the west central belt of Scotland's fondness for going "doon the watter", which distributed holidaymakers to a dozen or two relatively small venues throughout Arran, Bute, Argyle, Kintyre, and the Ayrshire Coast - there's really nowhere else in Britain where the inhabitants of a major metropolis can take an affordable boat trip for an afternoon and be delivered into an archipelago, where they can be relatively far from the modern world and from one another. Notably Dunoon and Rothsay had pleasure piers. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:56, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Plastic disposal

What is the most eco friendly way to dispose of overhead transparency sheets? --TammyMoet (talk) 19:16, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

In the US, type1 (polyester) film can be returned to 3M [1]. That says it's treated in such a way that it's not suitable for the normal polyester recycling path. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 19:25, 25 July 2013 (UTC)