In einer eMail vom 3/6/2007 4:42:28 PM W. Europe Standard Time schreibt
jphill32@...:

Surely with that entourage it can be decided who got the touche' and who had
priority.




You'd think that. Maybe it's true. We only suggest--I emphasize
suggest--that there are perhaps better ways to assure clean assaults based on
disciplined actions, not on the fiction that ambiguity dealt with by elaborate
conventions does so better.

There's also a question of personpower, I mean, can you always assume all
judges hastily assembled know what they are seeing? I agree having people
observe and comment on what they see is great training. We do that all the
time.
But is fencing based on the vote? I recall a guy who regularly directed
telling me, "You have to play to the director." How do we handle the
subjectivity issue? Which may, in fact, not involve intentional biases at all
but
very normal perspectival ones?

Walter Green has pointed out that teacher replacement in fencing generally
has reached a crisis, so where will all those competent directors be coming
from? If you assume points are sharp, that rule-based ambiguity looks like
pretty inexact a way to fence! How would you duel with sharps? is our premise.

That demands an emphasis on defense, which is, as we're finding out, very
demanding itself. A question in favor of orthodoxy today is whether it is an
efficient investment of time and effort, not because people don't want to
fence well, but because today's fencers do not come from the highly leisured
classes, a very tiny fraction of the population in the past, who could make the
investment. We could be bonkers to think with the kinds of working hours
people have and club resources available today we can produce what we aim for.

I'm surprised no one's leaped to defend points d'arret, a prohibition we
share with the AHF. Oh, well. Great cure for sliding epee buttons as some
have
argued? The stickums were a crude sport scoring device. What's wrong with a
properly executed attack that ends with a bent foible? Seems more real to
me than poking with a barbything.

My position is a properly executed attack in terms recognizably "classical"
shouldn't need a prosthetic. It's like the later argument for the pistol grip.
Even against jackets polished for sport fencing, and they've been around a
long time, or those undergirded by plastic chest protectors now fashionable
even among male sport fencers, one can execute the thrust the situation
requires without a crutch.

Like the light, it--the barbystickum--is incentive to replace technique with
simultaneous attacks. Who can hook whom first?

Tactically, well....Why angulate in sport situations with somebody slicked
out? But I've seen people do it. I make a mistake against a female fencer
with a protector, and all we do is foil, I don't cry foul and yearn for a barbed
thingy, I think oops! I made a goof, and adjust my tactics accordingly or
diagnose what was wrong with my extension when I performed the failed action.
Besides, last time I fenced a guy with his epee one, he couldn't for the life
of him make it stick and I was actually wearing Allstar FIE gear perfect for
that one, slippery-target sport-fencing rationale!

Bill



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