July 2016

Putting Your Mind to It

Anyone you know drive an electric car? A key part of proper planning is charging up the battery and knowing how much range you have before that power runs out. The consequences of poor planning are pretty stark here: when that charge dwin-dles and you’re rolling through Death Valley, it’s gonna take more than a long walk through the desert with a gas can to get you rolling again. It’s gonna take a flatbed tow truck and a whole lot of hassle.

Work through a few of these problems to make sure your planning won’t leave you stranded: 1. Your electric car can go 200 miles when the battery’s fully charged. Your friend’s house is 50 miles

away, but you need to buy a present for his birthday, and the store is 20 miles in the other direction. How many miles total will you drive (from home to store, from store to friend’s house, then back home again)? How many miles will you have to spare on your car’s battery at the end of the day?

2. You’re going over to your friend’s house for a birthday/slumber party. What do you need to plan for to make sure you can get there [e.g., your parent’s permission, a ride to your friend’s house]? What do you need to make sure to pack ahead of time [e.g., present, toothbrush, pajamas]? What do you need to plan for in order to get back home [e.g., do you know your home phone number? Do your parents know when and where to pick you up?]?

3. Let’s say the next CMAA tournament is coming up in two months. What do you need to plan for to win top medals in forms and sparring? Be specific and don’t forget any details--list who you need to talk to, who’s gonna take you down to the tournament, what you need to train for, and what you need to bring!

Have you ever run out of gas? Been late to school or karate? Arrived at sparring class only to

find you’ve left your pads at home (D’oh!!)? It takes thought and time to plan, but that planning

can save so much time and hassle in the long run. So take time and care packing your bag for

that trip, practicing all your curriculum to prepare for your next belt test, and eating healthy

foods to make sure you have the energy to take it to the limit!

Top Three (Poorly Planned) Jackie Chan Stunts

Broken bones. Fractured skull. Flayed flesh. Third-degree burns. It’s just another day at the office for Mr. Jackie Chan. He’s done some absolutely amazing things on film, and suffered some serious bodily harm in the process. We know Jackie likes to jump right into most stunts (literally). But a little more proper planning could have saved him some hurt in these cases.

Police Story (Four-Story Mall Drop): In Police Story, Jackie Chan plays a Hong Kong cop in pur-suit of a syndicate of baddies. At its climax, that pursuit takes him plunging down four stories in a mall to catch the top bad guy on the ground floor. Jackie jumps from a railing onto a hanging string of light bulbs--then slides along the string all the way down, with the bulbs breaking and glass and friction cutting into his hands during the ride. At the end, he crashes through several panes of glass (yes, more glass!) before hitting the hard mall tile. Some safety gloves and a seriously thick (and seriously soft) crash pad would’ve been a good plan here.

Armour of God (The Bough Breaks): In this 1986 film, Jackie plays a musician/adventurer called Asian Hawk (yeah!!) who goes on a mission to retrieve the pow-erful Armour of God from an evil cult. Turns out the trees posed more of a danger than the cultists. During a relatively routine stunt, Jackie jumps from a wall to a tree branch--which snaps, sending him plummeting more than 15 feet to the ground. His head cracks against a rock, sending a piece of bone into his brain. (Yes, more than just a flesh wound.) I know this was a low-budget production, but the crew probably could’ve tested the strength of that branch before the near-fatal jump.

The Legend of Drunken Master (Hot Coal Crab Walk): This sequel to a kung fu classic stars a relatively mature Jack-ie Chan as the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung. At the be-ginning, Wong is so bent on getting drunk and winning (and losing) fights, he gets into some big trouble with his dad and the law. When he gets back on the right foot (hi-ya!!), de-fending Chinese treasures from being stolen by foreigners, he ends up battling a huge opponent (and totally awesome Taekwondo kicker) at the iron works, where everything around is steaming and red hot to the touch. Dangerous? Sure. But then Jackie defies the meaning of danger by crab-walking backwards across hot coals on his bare hands and feet. They had to put him out with fire extinguishers after the stunt, which maybe could have spared Jackie’s flesh if they’d planned out a slightly cooler layer of coals for him to scamper across.

Have you ever done something a little reckless that you’d wished you’d planned a bit more for? Jumped a skate-

board off a big ramp? Leaped off a rock into water that was freezing cold or too shallow? Stayed out too late

and too far from home? Think of something you’ve done in the past and then consider what steps you could have

taken to make your experience no less daring--but still a little easier and more safe.

Expect the Best, Plan for the Worst

Even the most exhaustive planning doesn’t account for every varia-ble. The Space Shuttle Challenger was all set for launch on January 28, 1986 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Seven astronauts were aboard, including schoolteacher and payload specialist Christa McAuliffe. About a minute after launch, smoke could be seen pluming from the rocket. Seconds later, the rocket exploded. The disintegrated debris fell through the clear blue sky and plunged into the ocean. The crew members were killed, either by the explosion or the force of their compartment’s crash into the Atlantic.

This was a NASA mission, the agency that first put men on the moon, that’s stocked with the smartest scientists, computers, machinery and minds on the planet. Challenger itself was the result of years of careful planning and construction by the world’s foremost physicists and engi-neers. In state-of-the-art facilities, the shuttlecraft had been torture-tested for integrity at levels beyond its safety limits, just to make sure it could withstand the force of launch, ascent and orbit. Before its explosion in 1986, Challenger had successfully rocketed up on nine missions for NASA, including three SpaceLab launches.

What went wrong this time?

It turns out it was the cold. An O-ring seal in Challenger’s right solid rocket booster failed at liftoff, causing a breach that allowed pressurized burning gas to jet onto more hardware and an external fuel tank. The O-ring had been tested and stood up to scrutiny. But the Florida weather was unusually cold that January day, and it stressed one of Challenger’s crucial structural elements to its breaking point.

An investigative commission later reported that the launch should have been aborted, because key members of NASA’s launch team were aware of the dangers posed by the low temperatures that day. The O-ring engineers had deemed the highly unlikely chance of failure an “acceptable flight risk.” But the consequences of that low risk were incredibly serious. The push to move forward with the launch was the result of “go fever,” a reck-less, ambitious energy that causes people--in this case incredibly brilliant NASA engineers--to ignore safety concerns or contradictions in logic and just press on. Fire up those engines. Damn the torpedoes. Go go go. This time it ended in ruin.

What’s the takeaway? Risk is part of any plan. Something could go wrong (and often something does). But we need to know the potential impacts of a flaw and factor those into our plans so that, in the heat of it, we still have a way to land safely.

Think about this when it comes to karate training. If your muscles are sore from a long run the day before, it’s

probably ok to warm up, stretch out and head to sparring class. But if you really twisted your ankle on that

run, you’d better think twice. Same thing with remembering your mouth guard--poor planning there can result

in your teeth getting rocked loose. No fun. What’s another example of an “acceptable flight risk” in your

plans or activities in daily life? How could proper planning lower the risk?

Plan Like Perseus: Making Sure You Have the Stuff You Need (and a Good Bag to Hold It)

Hey all! Perseus here. You know, Greek demigod, son of Zeus, great-grandfather of Heracles. I wanted to tell you about a time when proper planning helped me on one of my biggest adventures ever.

You may have heard of Medusa. She was once a beautiful young woman. But she really made a mess of Athena’s temple one day and Athena was so mad she turned Medusa’s hair into snakes. Yikes! She was so scary looking that if you locked eyes with her, even for as long as it takes to blink, you’d turn right to stone. Snap, just like that. You’re a big ol’ rock statue. Forever.

I love adventure. Slaying monsters, saving humanity and all that. Athena and I have always been buddies and she told me all about Medusa and how that snake-haired beast had been turning some of our other buddies to stone. I couldn’t resist the urge to go and put a stop to it, but this was a quest that would take some serious planning. I couldn’t just go in blind (come to think of it, going in blind might’ve actually worked....). Any-way.

Athena said to go to the Hesperides (what a name, huh? It’s tough for me to say too....) The Hesperides worked in a big orchard, gathering apples and pears for the gods, but they also had a bunch of really cool, special weapons (not quite Escrima sticks or nunchucks, but still cool) that I could use to defeat Medusa.

The orchard-tending weapons masters gave me things I’d need for the quest: an adamantine sword of Zeus, Hades’ helm of darkness (to let me become invisible), and a special knapsack for Medusa’s head. (Yep, it could still turn you to stone even after you cut it off her body!). Finally, Athena gave me a polished shield. Use it like a mirror in Medusa’s cave, she said, and peek around the corners like a periscope. When you see those snakes wriggling, shut your eyes, get that sword swinging and charge!!!

Well, I headed to the cave, tiptoed in while Medusa slept, and peeked around carefully with the shield. Around one dark corner, her reflected head appeared, snakes still wriggling (I guess they never slept!). I snuck inside, swung my sword in one great slash and chop! There went Medusa’s head, rolling across the damp floor of the cave. It hit with a thud, and woke up Medusa’s sisters. I snatched up the head (carefully!) and put it in the special knapsack. I could still feel those furious snakes and even see the light from Medusa’s mean eyes shining through the cloth, but they couldn’t hurt me now. Then I put on the helm of darkness. Sorry, sisters! I slipped out of that cave invisible to all. What an adventure!

You can find lots of statutes of me in museums nowadays, which is kinda funny since I became famous for not getting turned into stone. Proper planning saw me through. It can for you too, so when you’re on a mis-sion make sure you’ve got what you need. Hi-ya!!

Perseus knew how to plan well for an adventure. What would have happened if he was missing the knap-

sack? What if he hadn’t brought the shield? Could he have beaten Medusa without his sword? What do you

need to plan for if you want to beat an opponent at the next tournament (remember though, no head

strikes!!)?

Ripple Effect SCHOOL UPDATE

Important Dates to Remember

Way to Go Black Belt

Congratulations to the following new Black Belt

Club and Leadership Members:

Cameron Wood

Jayden Busselman Michelle Tufte Alyssa Paulson

Cadence Paulson Sayer Paulson Elijah Paulson Sienna Zomer

Jake Stetz Cooper Brooks

Tyler Shaw Nate Zwisler

Meyghan Mahoney Marlon Off

Welcome New Students! Shyla Strong

Ethan Brattian Jacob Clark

Iyla Havekost Noah Herndon

Brooke Swenson Elisa Williams Audra Coppa Isaiah Avitia Vibha Kosuri Dillon Green

Karson Karhoff Owen Hogan Zeke Miller Izzy Miller

Brady Burkett Yovani Reveles

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