The thing I like best about Wikipedia is its obsessively detailed coverage of shit that isn’t real. See, for instance, the absolutely gorgeous entry on fictional martial arts and the best fictional martial art of all, Gun Kata.
Gun kata excerpt:
“Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically-predictable element. The Gun Kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents, while keeping the defender clear of the statistically-traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%. The difference of a 63% increased lethal proficiency makes the master of the Gun Katas an adversary not to be taken lightly.”
I like thinking that the developers of Gun Kata utilized massive computer simulations to generate new karate moves previously regarded as impossible. That’s computational karate, dude. Sister fields include computational skateboarding, computational parkour, and computational cup stacking.
I am Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Coordinator of the Cognitive Science Laboratory at William Paterson University in New Jersey. This blog largely concerns my interests in the Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Neuroscience, but also contains evidence of my messing around with art, photography, fiction, and robotics. Find out way more about me and my work