On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 11:10:00 -0400, "Doug Dotson"
wrote:

Whatever a "rice flail" is?

That's a numchuk, two short lengths of pole joined by a few links of
chain. It's in the fine martial arts tradition of arming the populace
with agricultural tools so that they wouldn't be confiscated by their
overlords.

Karate got its start in Okinawa that way, probably when the samurai
figured out the rice flail ruse G
R.