Fencing

2008-01-09 [Maeve104]: The base of the sword, nearest to your hand, is the easiest part to control as well as the strongest. It's easier to push someone's sword tip out of the way with the base, and if you do it right you can push the tip of their sword away from you, then slide your sword along theirs straight into their arm/torso. ;)

2008-01-09 [Dumnorix]: Basically, the base of the sword is known as the fort, which in French means "strong". The half more towards the tip is known as the foible, which in old French means "weak". It's a question of leverage, which you can figure out for yourself: you exert more strength on the blade the nearer it is to your hand, whereas, the further it is, the less strength you can give it. Therefore, if your two swords are "wrestling", your "fort" will beat his "foible"... and it's not a slight margin, I can assure you. Even a weak person can easily deflect a much stronger person's thrust by parrying fort to foible.
Then, through this opposition of strong to weak, you can, for instance, attempt to bind his blade in what is called a "prise de fer" (litteraly, "taking of iron" in French) and attack while simultaneously keeping his steel at bay.

P.S: I just remembered, Sir Alfred Hutton proved that, by parrying fort to foible, a normal fencing foil, weighing about just under a pound, can effortlessly deflect a thrust from a British army rifle and bayonet, the whole weighing 15 pounds.

2008-01-10 [Imperator]: How interesting, thanks to the both of you! :-)

And [Maeve104], where are the new lessons you made?

2008-01-10 [Maeve104]: The new lessons are in the Main Salle. Click on Salle and then Main Salle and you'll see the list of lessons. Hm...maybe I should make them easier to find. >_O

2008-01-10 [Imperator]: If I were you I would get rid of the Salle page and put your lessons right here on this main page.

2008-01-11 [Maeve104]: Hm. Good idea, though it'll have to wait a few days-I'm packing up to go back to college! XD

2008-01-12 [Imperator]: Cool! What are you studying?

2008-01-13 [Maeve104]: Aerospace engineering. :) Tis soooo awesome. :D

2008-01-13 [Imperator]: Whoa! That is awesome! Going to NASA? :P

2008-01-13 [Maeve104]: Hopefully! :)

2008-01-13 [Imperator]: So what type of Aerospace engineering specifically? Or does it get more specific? lol, I don't know how this works...

2008-01-13 [Maeve104]: I'm sure once I get to a career it'll be more specific, but right now I'm just studying basic Aerospace. Fluid flow and dynamics classes this semester-should be interesting. (And hopefully not too brain-crushing. >_<)

2008-01-13 [Imperator]: Ooooooooooo. So what do you hope to do? Design rockets? The next Moon lander? The Death Star? :p

2008-01-14 [Maeve104]: hehe. Well, hopefully not the Death Star. But yeah, it'd be awesome to work on missions to other planets/moons. I'd really like to be on a team for future Europa missions. Right now they don't have any way to sample the ice to see if there's any life in it so maybe they'll need a team to design that? :D Any project would be really cool though. I love space exploration.

2008-01-14 [Imperator]: I've heard that they're considering a submarine type thing that will use nuclear fuel to melt through the ice and then explore the supposed under ice oceans.

The U.S. should put billions more into the space program. I mean, look at what NASA is doing with its meager budget! If that was tripled we would be on the moon by then of this decade! Quite frankly, I want to see Star Wars technology in space before I die. :p

2008-04-15 [Imperator]: I see you haven't put your lessons on this page where they can actually be found or removed the old RPing pages. When do you plan on doing this? It's been over three months since you asked for a few days to do it...

2008-04-16 [Maeve104]: I'm sorry. I've been pretty overwhelmed with college recently. I know I've got to make some changes to the pages. >.< Quite frankly I'd forgotten completely about it until you said something. O_<

2008-04-16 [Imperator]: Ah, much better. :-) *gasp* How could you forget the ETA? You act like it's some internet page that never gets visited... :P

2008-04-17 [Maeve104]: hehe. Well, I've been busy with learning about beam stresses and Laplace transforms. >_< Eek! That'll put updating internet pages to the back of your mind any day. lol.

2008-04-19 [Imperator]: Uh... I don't think I'll ask...

2008-04-19 [Maeve104]: Don't! O_O Run awaaaaaaay! I'm done with most of my exams though, so hopefully I'll be on more this week.