For whatever reason, I started thinking today about the different schools of thought concerning fighting with the staff (maybe as a distillation of the different schools of thought on how to fight in general?). The kind I'm most familiar with, from Okinawan styles generally, holds a rigid staff near the middle, splitting it in thirds. For example, in a staff-vs-spear form, one end of the staff hooks away strikes or thrusts as the other end hits, for simultaneous offense and defense; another focus in the same style is on disarming movements. In contrast, almost every Chinese style I've seen holds a semi-flexible staff at one end; in contrast again, I've noted Filipino styles holding a rigid staff in the middle as well, but with training integrated into sinawali/weaving drills. I've also heard many times over of English quarterstaff fighting, but haven't been able to discern much from the few old documents I could find.
      Secondarily, my experience with the short staff has been almost exclusively Japanese, though I know of a few Korean, Filipino, and even Arabian styles. From my own experience, the short staff is either taught as held at one end, mimicking a sword for the most part, but with an emphasis on thrusts and the availability of a staff's two-end no-blade versatility, or held almost at both ends, and used for in-close grappling and throws.
      So, the two points to the rambling: it's just interesting to look at how the same thing can be looked at so many ways, and any thoughts or information or pointers to more information would be much appreciated.

-interesting, if true-
"In South Korea, police officers carry guns but do their best not to take them out because, according to Oh Sok, a police officer who shoots a criminal--regardless of the necessity of it--has to pay the criminal's medical bills (or funeral bills). As a result, many police officers there become damn good at unarmed combat, and from the sounds of it they get plenty of practice."