Aikido for 5/5/2008, Biking, and Apophenia...

Yesterday and today I rode my bike into work. Tomorrow I am giving a tour and I have to return my copy of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. I finished reading this novel last night and I enjoyed the quality and story of this novel. This novel introduced me to the term Apophenia, defined loosely as making spurious correlations between events that may or may not actually exist. To large degree, we all share some types of mutual apophenia. Religion, in most of its incarnations, involve a lot of apophenia to create meaning and context for its followers. Superstitions (such as astrology) and much alternative medicine (such as acupuncture and homeopathy) also require apophenia from their respective acolytes.

My struggles in the past have often centered around my own apophenia. Growing up, for me, has been a process of minimizing my random pattern matching and learning to live in the present and not in a world of mistaken beliefs that I reinforce through my own apophenia.

Anyway, I know when I have read a good novel when I think about its larger issues after I have finished the novel. On Monday night Jake and I practiced our last Aikido class for the term. We will advertise more aggressively at the beginning of the term as student are looking for activities. This will be after Aikido Summer Camp, so I hope to be able to bring those experiences to my Aikido training and teaching. Since I won't be teaching a formal Aikido class this summer, my goal is to try through solo ukemi practice and practicing my 13 and 35 step jo katas. Here are the techniques Jake and I practiced Monday night:

• Tskui nikkyo omote and ura
• Shomenuchi shihonage omote and ura
• Shomenuchi kaitenage omote and ura
• Shomenuchi kokyunage
• Yokomenuchi style punch to the face (roundhouse strike) with uki throwing quick follow through punch with the other fist. We practiced a couple of different kokyunages from this attack, along with attempts at iriminage and shihonage.