Secrets of the Samurai Sword

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:36:22 -0700

With The Daily Show on a summer break, I began to search for some other TV content to fill time. Naturally, I wandered over to PBS to see what they had. I came across this fascinating documentary entitled, "Secrets of the Samurai Sword." The documentary does a good job of explaining the cultural, spiritual, and scientific aspects of the Samurai sword. It's quite fascinating that even though 1,000 years ago, the Japanese swordmakers didn't understand the science behind their craft, but were able to create such effective weapons.

If you go to the 33 minute mark of the video, they do a live demonstration of a katana blade in the hands of a grandmaster swordsman. An archer fires an arrow directly at the grandmaster, and the grandmaster is able to defend himself by cutting arrows out of the air. Here's a clip of it:

Another interesting aspect of samurai swords is how they are rated. The more bodies a sword can cut through in one stroke, the higher quality the sword is. There's talk in the video about legendary five body blades which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If you jump to the 46 minute mark, they go over the meticulous work required in polishing finished swords. They use whet stones to polish the swords, and the stones can go for thousands of dollars. The sword polisher spends ten days polishing these swords.

I'll end with a passage from the Samurai honour code.

The Way of The Warrior: Think Not Yourself As Established

A man who thinks he is already established is unwise; a man content with fixed views won through considerable effort has already fallen into a trap. Without a moment of self-content with what little one has found out, one should keep thinking his accomplished results as being still unsatisfactory and not good enough, exploring the right way to the attainment through one's whole life. Truth lies in no place but in this course of pursuit itself.

[Update] For Canadians who want to watch this video, you can watch it here.

Yahoo! Labs Presents Dr. Lawrence Lessig

nospam@example.com (CHaN) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 23:00:45 -0700

Couple weeks ago, I had to pleasure of attending Yahoo! Labs' Big Thinkers Series, featuring Dr. Lawrence Lessig. His talk was entitled, "Innovation Corruption," aka what is wrong with Congress.

Here's a short intro to the talk:

His message was consistently simple and resounding: government and business are corrupted by money. This corruption becomes a roadblock to innovation because regulation is designed not for the social good but to maximize the money to Congress. The only way to fix this is to get money out of the system a system Lessig referred to as the economy of influence.

The three major players in the system are lobbyists, members of Congress, and interests. Lessig compares lobbyists to suppliers, or pushers inside the economy of influence. The boom of lobbying has pushed Congress into a pathological dependency on campaign cash. Money passes from the hands of the interest groups to the lobbyists, from the lobbyists to Congress in the form of campaign donations, and through legislation, money passes from Congress to the interest groups. This vicious cycle of a system has a significant effect legislation gets bent away from the public good because policy gets bent to those who pay.

The vast majority of Americans believes that money buys results, said Lessig. Because of money in the system, Americans have become cynical. Theyve disengaged, and the countrys democracy has become less responsive and more corrupt.

His ideas help explain some of the present problems that face America:

Why is our Internet speeds slower than the rest of the world?
Why did we bailout Wall Street in the financial crisis?
Why do we have an obesity epidemic?

And there's much much more. I thoroughly enjoyed the talk.

Enjoy.

Chan's Personal Blog - Science / Tech

Secrets of the Samurai Sword

Yahoo! Labs Presents Dr. Lawrence Lessig