jamesnvc1

Kiefer's stuff is very well cited, but many of the citations are kind of specious - he has a history of citing studies that, upon perusal, are unrelated or contradictory to what he claims.

Yeah, I went to a Taekwondo place that also taught Hapkido and found it a very good combination: Taekwondo will get you in very good shape (Olympic-style sparring builds up cardio and flexibility quite well) and Hapkido is what you actually use if you have to mess a dude up.

In general, I'd have to say it really depends on the teacher...a good teacher can make any martial art useful, just as a bad one can make any completely useless.

Ruby's yield is essentially just calling an anonymous function given to it in the form of a block. e.g., the following code snippets are equivalent

Ruby:

    def foo(bar)
      if block_given?
         yield bar
      end
    end

    foo 5 { |x| puts x } # prints 5

Python:

    def foo(bar,fcn):
        fcn(bar)


    foo(5, lambda x: sys.stdout.write("%d\n" % x))

The only real difference being that the ruby code is calling a block versus a "real" function.

edit Oops, had this page open for a while, didn't realize someone had replied in the interim, making my response somewhat redundant

There was actually some recent discussion about this on the Factor mailing list.

Factor's macros aren't really the same as Lisp's, as they are a compile-time optimization of dynamically-generated code, rather than a means of syntax extension. Factor does have a method for extending its syntax (called parsing words), but as of now they are not really first-class citizens in the way that Lisp macros are. There are, however, plans to remedy this and make them more declarative & easy to use.

Well, given that the parent comment is "Why don't you find a place where you don't have to pay taxes? Would it be as nice to live in as the US?", it seems a tad disingenuous to use people who don't pay taxes in a country where everyone else does as an example...they are still recieving the benefits (if any) of taxation.

But they still reap the benefits of living in a country where most people pay taxes, do they not?