What I did on my Holidays: living in Cooley
And now the Kids' Turn
The Gentle Sport of Judo, Part III
By the way, this is one of the first techniques one learns in judo.
The Gentle Sport of Judo, Part II
Tom has my writing arm in the lock; it's insured.
The Gentle Sport of Judo, Part I
The origins of the sport can be traced back to a single person, Dr. Jogoro Kano around 1890. Kano was not a big man, weighing less than 60 kg and his height was around 1m 60 cm. He was regularly annoyed at school by larger boys and this prompted him to create a new system of self-defence which he called Judo – the gentle way – so that he could defend himself. He adapted many of the techniques from ancient sports such as Sumo and Jujitsu and after some years the sport of Judo evolved from its humble beginnings in the Kodokan to become an Olympic sport and played in every country on the planet. As they say, the rest is history.
Kano was calligrapher, economist, judoka and traveled widely. He was one of the first people in Japan to learn English and teach courses in that language.
But Judo is more than just a sport. It is a philosophy and a way to view life.
Now closer to home. Every Friday evening I attend Judo classes at the club of Mr. Tom van der Kolk (see photos, that the gentleman in the blue judo suit) in Koedijk, the Netherlands (www.tomvanderkolk.nl). As you can see from the photo I am giving him a hard time but he still seems to be laughing. Tom’s club has a large number of students ranging from 7 years to upwards in the fifties. It is one of the most famous clubs in Holland and has several national and European champions.
Of course, others (like me) do judo for fun and after a hard week on the Wilmott forums you need it.
In judo the following kinds of techniqus are allowed:
Throws
Pin on the ground
Arm locks
Strangles
At all times the safety of the partner is absolute and no injury to him or her is tolerated. How many sports can boast this claim?
The Netherlands has had many numerous Judo champions; the two legendary judokas were Anton Geesink (first non-Japanese to win an Olympic gold medal) and Wim Ruska (from Amsterdam), another giant who won two gold medals at the Munich Olympics.
"Hello Wilmotters"
Let me introduce myself. Most Wilmotters have probably seen my posts in the Numerical Methods and Software forums (with the odd foray into the Off). Anyway, here's my song.
My Wilmott name is "Cuchulainn", a character who used to spend his time - when not defending the Cooley peninsula from the Munster cattle thieves - playing the game of hurling on the Cooley mountain slopes. More on this later.
I was born in Ireland in 1952. At an early age I realized that Mathematics was cool because it entailed less rote learning than other subjects such as Latin or History. In the late 1960’s (a time of great change in Ireland) the Mathematics Curriculum had become “new maths’; all of a sudden we started rotating cubes and other geometrical shapes - and as we were told by our brand-new maths teacher - were examples of a group! OK fair enough, I said. Of course, we also did Differentiation and Integration.
It did not take me long to decide that maths was for me and I immediately enrolled in the four-year Maths course in Trinity College, Dublin. Dublin in the 70’s was much different than now. At the time there were 3000 students, a fair percentage of whom came from parts foreign. In those days we did various courses on pure and applied mathematics. Most of all, the fluid dynamics, functional analysis and numerical analysis courses (and their relationship) were particularly fascinating. This spurred me to embark on research into Finite Elements and Finite Differences– which by the way – seem to be quite useful for many kinds of real-world phenomena, including QF.
In the mid 1970’s I began a kind of world tour, taking me to countries such as Italy, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Now I live on the edge of a nature reserve in a sparsely populated area of North Holland with Ilona and Brendan (and the four cats). To quote James Joyce (Finnegans Wake (no apostrophe!) it feels like “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs" and "Far calls, comimg far, Us then, End here, Finn again!"
This was the first shot.
Coming up next …
. Are Partial Differential Equations (PDE) good?
. Where is Cooley?
. C++ is easy, really
. A critique of the writings of J. Caeser(100 - 44 BC); did he tell everything?
