#debating if I have different bodies per heights or use a generic one

[degrees-of-lili]

I was focusing on the character creator for the thing I'm trying to make in ren'py looks like an absolute nightmare but there is a method (no there isn't) to the madness

[tearlessrain]

Giant Masterlist of Cathar Facts (that I completely made up but nonetheless rigidly adhere to)

I am an unstoppable force and disney should have killed me when they had the chance (that chance was splash mountain when I was seven and as you can see I survived).

Under a break because it is way too long and covers really quite a lot, much of which I will probably never even need. But researching and writing this kind of thing is what I consider a fun afternoon so here we are.

General basic stuff

Cathar are basically felids evolved to fill a similar evolutionary niche to humans in the absence of any viable apelike species on their native planet, in the same way hyenas evolved to fill a niche normally occupied by canids. 

They are pursuit predators but not terribly efficient ones outside their home planet. In terms of both speed and strength they can outperform humans on average in the short term, but have noticeably less stamina especially when it comes to running or walking long distances. They greatly outmatch any quadrupedal felids for stamina, however. (Mandalorians are an invasive species)

They run hotter than humans, around 100-102F.

Though height varies quite a bit, cathar are taller on average than humans and build muscle easily, making them extremely formiddable opponents in hand-to-hand combat.

The average face/skull shape of cathar is largely based on assumptions that they evolved under weirdly similar conditions to humans evolving from early hominids, aka shortening of the face, larger cranium, smaller mouth, etc.

While they are obligate carnivores and do have elongated canines, their teeth are more even in size than wild felids, and while they do still have barbed tongues, the barbs are relatively small/soft and more similar to a housecat than anything of comparable size (aka they won’t literally take your skin off if they lick you).  They also have somewhat thinner skin than wild cats, though they are still more damage resistant than humans.

They do not have retractable claws because that’s not how fingers work, but they do have narrow, naturally pointed claws rather than humanlike fingernails. Many cathar choose to either dull them or file them down for convenience, but losing/damaging them, as per that one ambient dialogue on Dromund Kaas that I can never find when I need it, is extremely traumatic for them. 

They have tails because I want them to, used for both balance and communication. Cathar tails are approximately lion-like, thin with a coarse tuft at the end regardless of markings (ie. a cathar with stripes won’t have a tiger tail), with the tip the same shade or a few shades darker than the darkest part of their coats. occasionally those from colder regions will have longer fur over the whole tail, or look like they don’t have a tuft due to longer fur overall. 

Variation and a lot of bullshitting about genetics

Wookiepedia describes Cathar as “a planet of savannas and rough uplands” but I refuse to believe that all these habitable worlds are all one consistent climate/temperature across the whole globe. The weirdly ubiquitous infrastructure/cultural info I can kind of forgive since 90% of them were wiped out by Mandalorians and the rest left, and I’m charitably assuming there were a lot less than 7 billion cathar to begin with, so a lot of smaller or more isolated cultures across the planet were lost entirely. 

They have less sexual dimorphism than SWTOR implies, though females are a little smaller on average and tend to have shorter/finer manes that are closer to their base color. In terms of relative strength/mass the difference is minor and female cathar are still very capable of fucking you up (the conventional assumption in the Empire that females are weak/docile and males are too uncontrollable to enslave is not remotely true in either direction). 

Variation in fur/metabolism/ear and nose shape depends on which region/s of Cathar they come from (or their ancestors come from), but they don’t recognize different “races” the way humans do, particularly in the wake of the Battle of Cathar. 

On average, cathar originating closer to the equator have shorter, finer fur, larger and more tapered ears, a tendency toward slender, lanky builds, and coloration that leans more toward golds/reds and higher pigment density. whereas those closer to the poles are much stockier and can be extremely fluffy, sometimes with an undercoat, with paler colors and less vivid/extensive markings. None of the above is universally true and cathar didn’t necessarily always stay in the region where their ancestors come from (and thus sometimes you get people like Riska, who is all limbs but has fairly northern features and entirely too much fur)

Cathar mostly left their planet in groups, so in some parts of the galaxy you’ll run into whole colonies that originate mostly from one part of the planet and have distinct appearances/cultural idiosyncrasies from other colonies.

They mainly follow the same general rules that apply to most felids in terms of coloration/pattern.

Markings can be stripes, spots, or less commonly rosettes (definitely some version of Taqpep variants) and mostly lie along Blaschko’s Lines, though it’s more obvious on some individuals than others and it isn’t always perfectly precise. Even spotted individuals usually display some striping on the tail and around the eyes, though not always. 

“Default” coloration is black-based, with dark markings on a greyish or brownish base. 

Countershading falls pretty much along patterns you’d expect and usually lightens the chest/stomach, lower face, palms/soles, and inner thighs. Specific distribution and patterns vary quite a bit, and sometimes express in odd ways (hence whatever is going on with Khatte). Darkest points tend to be the tail tip, nose bridge, and mane.

Genetically solid cathar are incredibly uncommon; much more common are genes that affect the appearance/distribution of markings, sometimes rendering them almost invisible. Even ones who appear mostly solid (aka Khatte) usually still have some faint striping around the face and/or tail.

Khatte is basically some loose equivalent of ticked tabby, which mostly just looks like weird countershading but leaves some faint striping on his face and tail.

Jial-ro’s coloration is the result of a gene that suppresses all eumelanin production, and a sepia-like form of partial albinism. 

Riska has something similar, along with something that reduces the size/spread of spots.

Food 

They’re mainly carnivorous and have different nutritional requirements from humans (similar but not identical to those of a cat), which can be a problem in places like the military where standardized rations are the norm. In the Republic a cathar can usually put in a request for rations designed to accommodate carnivores (or supplements, failing that), though they might have some trouble on more isolated or undersupplied planets. The rare cathar in the Imperial military have to procure supplements out of pocket, though it’s technically possible to get reimbursed for it if they’re willing to wade through the bureaucracy.

Cathar are perfectly capable of eating raw meat with few to no ill effects, and have a subgenre of cuisine centered around it (and while they didn’t invent sushi, they have enthusiastically embraced the concept). They also have plenty of ways of cooking meat and readily adopt any new ones they come across. 

Their “natural” diet apart from meat mainly consists of fruit, root vegetables, and eggs, though the closer to the poles you get the less likely you are to encounter fruit in a dish. Cathar never cultivated grain and it holds no meaningful nutritional value for them, so bread, rice, and similar products simply do not appear in traditional cuisine. This does not stop some of them from eating grain products in small amounts, as they can still enjoy the taste, but it isn’t any healthier than processed sugar is to humans and they have a high rate of gluten intolerance as a species.

All cathar have a heightened and refined ability to detect savory/umami type flavors, but around 30-40% of cathar, and the vast majority of those from colder regions, have no taste receptors for sweetness at all. This has resulted in the cathar equivalent of the Cilantro Debate centering around desserts, even though they’re all perfectly aware that it’s genetic, and some who can’t taste sweetness still enjoy some desserts for the other flavors present. Those who do have sweet taste receptors are about as sensitive to it as humans, but it tends not to have the same addictive quality for them and a lot of them don’t like processed sugars in anything but small doses. They would appreciate a lightly sweet creme brulee but most of them would find soda absolutely disgusting.

Citrus is right out.

They suffer no more ill effects than humans from drinking alcohol, and due to generally having a fair amount of mass they can usually drink a lot of it.

Social minutiae

They use a fair amount of feline body language, particularly with others of their own species. While facial expressions play a part and they do smile, scowl, and generally express broad emotions, they have a reduced range of facial mobility compared to more humanoid species and no eyebrows to speak of, which leads to a lot of them having what humans perceive as resting bitchface. It also results in humans underestimating the range and depth of their emotions, and can be a problem in the medical field with human medics/doctors who haven’t been trained to work with less humanoid aliens and won’t necessarily recognize severe pain or distress.

Their ears are less articulated than a cat’s but still have some degree of mobility that serves more of a social function than a practical one. They also express a lot of emotion through their tails, to the point that it can be a detriment in some situations if they haven’t practiced consciously keeping control of it.

Bumping foreheads is a common way to express platonic/familial affection, or can be the equivalent of a chaste kiss between partners. They also squint and slow blink, though it doesn’t always translate clearly to other species.

They have a wider range of vocalization than humans; while their voices are often humanlike and they’re just as capable of articulate speech, they can also growl, purr, and make sounds outside human hearing range. Those raised among humans or near-humans tend to do this less, if at all, while cathar raised in more insular communities of their own kind can come off as very taciturn due to heavier reliance on nonverbal communication.

Sense of smell is much stronger and more refined than a human’s and plays a more significant role in how they perceive and navigate the galaxy. They can occasionally be mistaken for Force-sensitive by humans due to their knack for picking up on emotional distress or the presence of particular species/people by scent. This is more true with people they’re familiar with; they won’t pick out distinct members of the other species by default but will eventually be fairly reliable in identifying the scent of a friend or anyone else they spend a lot of time around.

The exception to the above is other cathar, who they can easily tell apart on an individual basis. They have scent glands around the jaw/neck that come into play for identification, conveying broad emotional states, in some situations can aid medical diagnoses, among other things. They also play a part in building connection and familiarity between friends, family, or romantic partners.

The ~horny section~

Cathar don’t really kiss the way humans do by default, but they can, and usually do so unless they’ve somehow had no contact with any near-human species at all. Their equivalent is gentle biting around the neck and jaw, which is another situations where the scent glands are relevant, and when aroused that whole area becomes an erogenous zone for the vast majority of cathar. 

Plenty of humans (particularly if they don’t encounter a lot of aliens day to day) will avoid kissing cathar anyway because they have sandpaper tongues and dry mouths and fangs, and it feels fucking weird if you aren’t prepared for that. 

They tend to be very bitey in general unless specifically asked not to. It only becomes a problem if the cathar in question is inexperienced with humanoids and hasn’t figured out how much bite force is acceptable for a species with thinner, more sensitive skin.

Their dicks are fairly humanoid in size and shape, though somewhat more conical at the head, but they do have a sheath rather than a foreskin. after maturity they don’t actually retract into the sheath more than about two inches when flaccid, and tend to be slightly less sensitive than the average human (same keritinization factor that affects circumcised humans). It also makes them more vulnerable to damage, but since it’s customary to wear pants on most civilized planets, that never really becomes a problem in the course of a normal day. The base of the shaft that’s usually covered has noticeably higher sensitivity. There are probably individual exceptions to most of the above.

Conventional understanding is that cathar don’t have barbs, which is true the vast majority of the time, though about 60% of them have some amount of vestigial non-keratinous bumps over their head that have no noticeable affect on anything aside from occasional increased sensitivity in that area. Rarely an individual might develop a few actual barbs at the onset of puberty, but they have no practical function and pose a risk of discomfort and injury, and can easily be removed via a fast and mostly painless medical procedure, so the number of adults who have them is close to zero.

Females do have (mild, easy to suppress if desired, and mainly not at all disruptive) heat cycles. Other cathar can generally tell by scent, but not to a distracting degree, and it’s considered rude and inappropriate to point it out with anyone but a close friend or partner. It should go without saying that males don’t have heat cycles, but I’ve gotten enough weird DMs about this to know that I need to say it. Unless said male is trans, and not on any sort of HRT, that’s not how that works. 

They kind of have breasts but unless actively nursing they’re barely noticeable if at all, especially under clothing. Cathar have much fewer hangups about going topless regardless of gender than certain human cultures do.

[tenshindon]

despite the literal hours of research i did for this building, the accuracy of this structure is VERY debatable because of just how vague everything surprisingly was. not gonna lie in the full courtyard map below i took a LOT of liberties alongside the material i could work with. Also after a while I felt my sanity leave through my orfaces so not everything’s appropriately to scale.

as per usual I’m gonna put my thoughts below but I’m also going to put a map of the whole dojo grounds down below the cut. if you don’t care about all of the specifics or justifications and just want some kind of reference for a drawing, story, or just want an idea of Tien’s house, then please enjoy.

FULL MAP:

It’s surprisingly near impossible to find any pictures of existing courtyard dojos, Japanese or Chinese, so I had to get a Little creative and work with what I had. The thinking behind this was that Tien’s students potentially lived at the dojo with him. Admittedly I didn’t mark the buildings on the sides as being living spaces because I’m not even entirely sure, but I let it be a possibility. I also only put two buildings because Tien doesn’t seem to have all that many students (from what I was able to see, 12 students max, not yet counting Yurin), and if I were to divide the rooms appropriately and assuming two people slept in one room, then each student could be accounted for (About 6 students per building).

I knew that there was more to the building and the door in the back wasn’t just an exit because in a later shot the students are seen walking down a pathway to the left side of the building- it wouldn’t make much sense for them to leave the area then renter it. Additionally, when Tien dismisses his class for the day, they don’t make way for Tien’s doorway- they leave through the back, or at least walk to the side. As for where they’re going is an absolute mystery, especially considering the map. My justification was that they were just leaving the dojo for the time being to get some outside food or something- maybe just get out for a bit. Why were they still in their uniform? I couldn’t tell you and for that I apologize.

I put “private rooms” due to Roshi’s “private training” session with Yurin. They were placed at the bottom of the map because when Yurin is running across the walkway, she’s coming from the right- presumably the bottom. Not only that, Roshi is shown carrying Yurin towards the way she initially came. Additionally, when Goku pops in to find Master Roshi, you can faintly see trees in the background, and referencing all of the walkway shots there are a number of trees. It was also important to remember that when the students were walking away, there was no visible buildings behind them, so the final place I had to conclude to put the buildings was at the bottom.

By Tien’s house are simply just entry walkways; there’s nothing in nor special about either buildings. I’m not sure where I read this exactly- I forgot to save the page amidst my breakdown. But if I recall correctly and if this is correct, students are supposed to enter the area through the left while the teacher enters through the right. Either that, or the door on the left could be an entrance/exit and vice versa for the right side.

TIEN’S HOUSE:

The only room I was able to absolutely confirm existed was the room Tien and Goku sat in. Even then, this room itself is very vague on where it is. Judging the position of the camera, I assumed that the camera would be from the doorway’s perspective, seeing as no other wall visibly had any doors. Additionally, I knew they were in Tien’s house specifically because after their conversation ends, someone knocks on the door and the two look towards the left side of the screen, further fueling my theory the door was to the right side of the room. Also, the existence of two different types of windows gave me an idea that the room was absolutely in the top-left corner of the house. It couldn’t be the absolute left side of the house due to the lack of window- and I know there was no window in the room due to the shot that showed the wall directly behind Goku. Other than a brass frame, there was no window nor door- thus the door had to be on the right side of the room.

As for the rest of the house, I honestly just looked around traditional Chinese and Japanese homes as well as modern one-floor layouts and put rooms where I thought they were appropriate. Quick note about the bathroom, I promise there’s probably a curtain or screen of some kind so Tien and Chitaozu have privacy while they bathe. Since this is just a quick map, I didn’t put too much detail into the rooms and furniture.

I put a door in the back of Tien’s house because I figured he’d be pretty devoted not only to his school but just going to the courtyard to train.

Now for the screenshots I used and how I found my measurements as well as just providing visuals for what I’ve said before.

THE DOJO

I used Yurin’s height to measure the door (I used a different shot- the one where she’s ascending the stairs so I could get a better idea of her size compared to the door. I’ll also elaborate on how I found Yurin’s height in a later part of this post). I found that the door was about two Yurin’s high, which was about 10′6 feet high. An additional note is that all three doors appear to be sliding doors as they lack any visible handles. I extended the front doors being sliding doors to the rest of the doors inside of Tien’s house.

This shot was used to identify the ring pull doors in the back. Shots I didn’t include also exposed the fact that Tien’s doorway and the doors in the back were the only entrances in the courtyard.

This shot was used to measure the doorway. I expanded the size of the canvas I posted this on and drew the rest of Tien’s body, then sizing it so it was proportionate to be right next to the entrance. I deduced the doorway was about one Tien (6′0 ft) wide once I put him on his side. 

Using Tien’s height from the previous shot, I used the doorway size to measure the courtyard in total, coming to around 66 feet wide and presumably 66 feet long, as most courtyards are evenly square shaped..

I used this shot to not only acknowledge there was a gap in-between the courtyard and the walls of the dojo, but to also get Yurin’s height so I could use her as my main unit of measurement. Using the traditional heads-high method, I was able to get that Yurin was about 5′3 (5.25 specifically).

Shot used to identify the private room and the placement of the room in respect to the rest of the dojo. I knew this was a room in the dojo because there’s a sign that says “Tenshinhan Dojo” (or more literally, “Tianjin Dojo”)

Bringing back the first shot of the walkway from when Yurin first arrived to the dojo, I combined the two plus a flipped version of the first picture and came up with my walkway. Using Yurin from the shot where I got her height, I set her up lying down and proceeded to measure the walkway from the entrance of the courtyard to the entrance of Tien’s backdoor. I came to about 70 feet. 

Shot to show lack of buildings.

TIEN’S HOUSE

The inside of Tien’s tea room is pretty inconsistent; the identifiably octagonal window isn’t as close to the wall in the second shot as it is in the first shot. For symmetry sake, I technically shrunk the size of the room in the second shot. Since I wanted to establish this room as a tea room, I did a quick search to see how big tea rooms generally were and came to about 9x9. Not only so I could give the room some breathing room and so I wouldn’t have to do any more math because I’d done more than a studying psychologist should, I just took the size of the house’s front doors and used that as measurement for the room.

I included the storage room below so the left window would have an appropriate place to exist. That, and it allowed Tien’s house to be a bit bigger and I was able to make things more comfortable.

Shot to solidify the fact the left outside window couldn’t possibly exist in the tea room.

As for Tien’s radish farm, traditional Chinese farms are typically right on the ledge of mountains. Taking note of the mountains right behind Tien’s dojo, I assumed his farm would be there. Not only that, but the existing shots of Tien’s farm depict a mountain right in the back, so while his farm doesn’t follow the ledge format it at least exists by the mountains in the back. I didn’t see a dire need to illustrate this so I didn’t, but if you want me to then I’ll be happy to make an addition to this post.

Anyway, that’s the end of my work. If you have any opinions please feel free to tell me them. The way I formatted Tien’s dojo/house doesn’t seem right and feels uncomfortable personally, and I feel like it could look MUCH much better, so all input is welcomed!

[dointoomuchsworld]

URT amidst the Pharma war

WUpon selecting a communication theory for this blog entry, I decided, why not- let’s just Google search: “what communication theory can be related to the anti-vax crowd”? The top six search results and their links that pop up spew these headlines and additional phrases:

1. “The anti-vaccination infodemic on social media: A behavioral…: However, the anti-vaccination movement is currently on the rise, spreading online misinformation about vaccine safety and causing a worrying…” (www.journals.plos.org) 

2. “How to respond to vocal vaccine deniers in public- WHO: a vocal vaccine denier is defined in this document as a person who is not only denying scientific consensus but also actively advocating against vaccination…” (World Health Organization 2017 Regional Office for Europe). 

3. “Vaccine hesitancy is a problem attracting growing attention and concern.” (www.sciencedirect.com) 

4. “The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination… Distrust in scientific expertise is dangerous… Results show that even if anti-vaccine narratives have a small persuasiveness, a large part of the population will be rapidly exposed to them. ” (www.nature.com) 

5. “Conspiracy Beliefs, Rejection of Vaccination, and…: Many conspiracy theories appeared along with the Covid-19 pandemic. Since it is documented that conspiracy theories negatively affect…” (www.frontiersin.org) 

6. “Combating Vaccine Hesitancy: Teaching the Next Generation… In 1999, the anti-vaxxer movement, an organized body of people who refuse to vaccinate and blaming vaccines for health problems” (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) 

Well, this didn’t answer my question. It was surely a lot to read as we dive into my entry here, and it slapped someone with my way of thinking with some shut-down labels: dangerous, misinformed, science-denier, nonconsensual, behaviorally problematic, conspiracist, rejecter.

Do you know what these Google search results say to me? Censorship. 

I am selecting the communication theory of Uncertainty Reduction Theory to apply towards my discussion of the pro-vaccine/anti-vaccine war. 

Uncertainty Reduction Theory (URT) asserts that “people have a need to reduce uncertainty about others by gaining information about them” (Berger, C.R., & Bradac, J.J.) The information gained can be used to predict the others’ behavior. Reducing uncertainty can be particularly beneficial in relationship development, so it is more typical amongst people when they expect or want to develop a relationship than among people who expect or know they will not develop a relationship.

We have a few basic ways people seek information about another person:

1. Passive strategies: we observe the person, either in situations where the individual is likely to be self-monitoring (in a classroom; in the stands of a public event)

2. Active strategies: we ask others about the person we’re interested in, or set up a way to observe that person (sign up for the same class; sitting at a different table in the same restaurant)

3. Interactive strategies: we communicate directly with the person.

I believe this theory can be used to my topic of discussion because if we are in one of the hottest moments of the ongoing anti- and pro- vaccine movement and pharmaceutical war with COVID-19 at the forefront of it all, no matter which side we put our beliefs, followings, trust, or knowledge in, we seek out others with the same data, statistics, views, and agreeability. We strive to reduce uncertainty with others by gaining their information to benefit one another, and either develop ongoing relationships, or not. If we observe or interact with others to discover where their loyalties lay, we either discuss, debate--or worst of all, we fight like cats and dogs to what seems like the death--or come to an understanding and continue or discontinue the developed relationship. 

Let’s begin how I feel within the war on vaccines. I, if you will, an introvert who isn’t so fond of putting my opinions out there, am publicly posting this in hopes of finding others and reducing my uncertainty about how others may feel, or find if they may feel similarly so that I may stand with them or offer them strength in opinions and studies. Or maybe, just to prompt an open discussion.

1. Pro-vaccine

2. Anti-vaccine

Unnecessary and divisive labels meant to categorize people into black and white thinking.

Where is the label for: I think it’s perfectly logical to want the ability to make decisions about each vaccine available on an individual basis for each of my children and myself?

Pfizer is going for full FDA approval and might have it by the end of this month, emergency approval has already been granted for 12-15 year-olds, and in September emergency approval will be requested for 2-11 year-olds. 

How can you get granted EAU for an experimental drug in an age group that isn’t having an emergency? To protect vaccinated adults? Sacrificing your healthy child for an illness that doesn’t affect them so that vaccinated adults may think you’re a good person and may give you permission to move freely about your lives?

Nothing says I don’t believe in science more than vaccinating a 2-year-old for COVID. 

Imagine being excited to experiment on your own child.

Children don’t stand a chance in this pharmaceutical industry that for decades have put profit ahead of doing what is right. Additionally but important to note, the pharmaceutical industry has not prioritized the research and development of cancer drugs for children. They rely on treating children with adult cancer drugs, which are far more dangerous, toxic, and aggressive on a child’s developing body, because adult cancer drugs are some of the best-selling pharmaceuticals for companies such as Merck & Co., Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and J&J.

Here is an incomplete current list of places making the COVID vaccine mandatory, either for employment or for on site services: Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Officer; WPAFB (when it is FDA approved); Atria Senior Living; Rocky River Senior Center; Continuing Healthcare Solutions; Newburgh Heights city employees; Supers Landscape; Cleveland State University; Kenyon College; Cleveland Clinic fertility center: spouses required to have two doses of vaccine before being able to be present for embryo transfers. Kroger grocery stores now mandate proof of vaccination of its employees in order for employees to de-mask. This is marking the unclean versus clean. Here we are, segregating healthy people and in many circumstances being told to show our private healthcare papers.

There is no place for this behavior in a free society. This is discrimination based on vaccine status. 

A business in Preble County is allowing employees who have taken the coronavirus vaccine to use the fitness room while those who have not, or are naturally immune, are not allowed access. They can work there but they cannot work out there... is this about health?

What changes have you made for yourself as an individual this pandemic to benefit your health and wellness?

The NFL continues to separate their unvaccinated athletes from their fellow vaccinated athletes. Separate practice areas, separate eating areas, and de-masking only those who have been vaccinated. Discontinuing COVID testing twice a week only for the vaccinated. Not allowing the unvaccinated to leave the hotel while traveling with the teams. As if either party is not safe to be around.

As a writer considering her reader, I’m wondering if you’re celebrating right now in regards to these advances, or raising some eyebrows. As for me, it fills me with a primitive rage that I feel only when someone endangers my children.

But let’s keep going.

Vaccines are necessarily risky, as recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court and by Congress. 

The risk: benefit ratio varies with the frequency and severity of disease, vaccine safety, and individual patient factors. These must be evaluated by patient and physician, not imposed government, corporations, or other bureaucrats.

The smallpox vaccine is so dangerous that you can’t get it now, despite the weaponization of smallpox. Rabies vaccine is given only after a suspected exposure or to high-risk persons such as veterinarians. The whole-cell pertussis vaccine was withdrawn from the U.S. market, a decade later than from the Japanese market, because of reports of severe permanent brain damage. The acellular vaccine that replaced it is evidently safer, though somewhat less effective. 

After being fully informed of the risks and benefits of a medical procedure, patients have the right to reject or accept that procedure. Preemption of patients’ or parents’ decisions about accepting drugs or other medical interventions is a serious intrusion into individual liberty, autonomy, and parental decisions about child-rearing.

Forcing Ohioans or anyone into receiving an experimental medical intervention in exchange for freedom to go to work or participate in society is contrary to fundamental human rights.

How does one feel about the persuasion to vote YES on Ohio HB 248? How’s this for propaganda: Vote YES, join the movement, on the Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act.

This Ohio House Bill was introduced on April 6, 2021, and is in 25% progression (LegiScan). Per this Republican Partisan Bill, OH HB248 is to enact section 3792.02 of the Revised Code to authorize an individual to decline a vaccination and to name this act the Vaccine Choice and Anti-Discrimination Act.

Why should we do this? This is a stand for health freedom, for medical freedom; a vital legislation to protect vaccine choice for Ohioans now and into the future. If this legislation isn't passed, you can expect that vaccine mandates and vaccine passports will become a reality of our future. And even if you're fine with the traditional vaccines, even if you have always gotten the flu vaccine, and even if you decided to get the COVID vaccine... Ohioans will be faced with the reality that any future vaccine can be mandated by the state, retailers, employers, schools etc., and we'll have zero to say about it. This legislation will protect all Ohioans from the dystopia that we're currently facing.

Do I sound like one who denies the expertise of science now? I stand with science. I stand with informed consent. I stand with freedom. I stand with healthcare professionals. I stand with Ohio workers. I stand with parents. I stand with students. I stand with this bill for the people, by the people. 

In the year 1983, the total doses of vaccines for children from birth to age 18 consisted of 24 doses and 7 injections. As of 2020, we now administer 69 doses with 50 injections. The CDC child vaccination schedule is bloated, and I will say it from the mountaintops, no matter the reaches for justification. 

Advanced Pediatric, a Cleveland area pediatric practice, is embracing the idea that unvaccinated children are not safe, and must stay masked and distanced, including from others on the playground (advancedped.com). How badly will we damage our children’s social and emotional health with this kind of discriminatory action propagated by adults that are supposed to be protecting them?

Prior to COVID, measles was the much-publicized threat used to push for mandates, and is probably the worst threat among the vaccine-preventable illnesses because it is so highly contagious. There are occasional outbreaks, generally starting with an infected individual coming from somewhere outside the U.S. The majority, but by no means all the people who catch the measles have not been vaccinated. Almost all make a full recovery, with robust, life-long immunity. 

The last measles death in the U.S. occurred in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Is it justified to revoke the rights of all Americans because of the hypothetical risk that a person who cannot be vaccinated due to immune deficiency might catch measles from an unvaccinated American, rather than from a visitor or a person whose artificial vaccine-based immunity has waned? Such mandates establish a precedent for ever-greater restrictions on our right to give—or withhold—consent to medical interventions?

So as I continue, and back to the focus on the COVID fiasco that I am pondering… Per the CDC website in the association with the COVID vaccine, VAERS reports that in the last four months we have recorded more deaths from the COVID vaccine than from all vaccines combined from mid 1997 through the end of 2013. As of April 30, there are 3,837 cases where the COVID-vaccinated patient has died within days to weeks after their intervention. 384 pages of patients age, sex, location, date of vax, date of onset, who administered it, who the manufacturer is, whether they were taken to the ER, and the symptoms or prior health conditions if any.

Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (Lazarus, Klompas). Low reporting rates preclude or slow the identification of “problem” drugs or vaccines that endanger public health. Barriers to reporting include a lack of clinician awareness, uncertainty about when and what to report, as well as the burdens of reporting. Reporting is not usually part of a clinicians’ workflow, takes time, and is duplicative (Lazarus, Klompas). 

VAERS is a passive reporting system. Healthcare workers are not required to submit reports of deaths or injuries. VAERS only reports 1% of actual injuries according to a report prepared under contract with The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Lazarus, Klompas).

To recap those last several paragraphs, we are constantly told those who decline vaccines for illnesses they themselves are at very little risk for developing complications from, are putting the immunocompromised at risk. What we don’t often hear is that the procedure itself comes with risk and what that risk level is exactly is unknown. 

What we do know is that only somewhere between 1-10% of adverse events are ever reported largely due to medical professionals' lack of awareness on the subject matter. We cannot force healthy people to undergo a medical procedure for which the administrator of and manufacturer have no liability when we know there is innate risk. We can’t trade one group's theoretical risk for another group's known risk. 

We never hear any other side of this argument, it’s censored from us and never presented to us. 

Many of these VAERS reports were from assisted living facilities, and we can determine this by scrolling through the log of reports. Do you trust many assisted living facilities, or do you think many of them had a choice?

As of June 18, VAERS reports for myocarditis or pericarditis in people age 6 to 29 for all non-COVID shots in the entire history as VAERS as: 394. The total number of VAERS reports for myocarditis or pericarditis in people ages 6 to 29 in the last six months for COVID shots: 590. 

Without voluntary informed consent, medicine becomes violence. 

How many billions of dollars do you think has been handed out to mainstream media outlets, such as your favorite radio stations, to propagate the COVID vaccine and to have your favorite channel’s or station’s host, or celebrity, holler into your car or household: to go out and get it now, because all the cool people are doing it; to save our communities. Because you’re a selfish expanse of existence if you don’t. Although they who preach to go get the intervention likely have little to no experience in any of the information I have provided thus far.

The Dayton RTA public transit system has banners plastered onto the sides of their buses in all caps that say, “I’m not afraid of the vaccine!” or “Help Save Lives. Get Vaccinated.” 

When their passengers board the bus, they may show their hand gesture of the peace sign, to indicate they’ve been vaccinated. And at that, you’ll get a thirty-dollar credit in adult passenger fare upon proof of being fully vaccinated. A whole month of free rides and a promotional “Vaccinated” button to wear.

Promotions for vaccinated people are a flawed tactic for both brand-building and public health. Brands across industries are skipping beyond vaccine education and awareness to take a more active role in coronavirus vaccine acceleration. 

One size does not fit all. All humans are not the same and have different risk factors for both the disease and the intervention. There is no greater danger to all of us than the dehumanization of others. Not trusting a vaccine, or any given doctor for that matter, does not make me a science denier.

Where there is risk there must be choice. Not ostracism. Vaccine choice and anti-discrimination.

People who are labeled as vaccine hesitant should really be called people who are hesitant to be coerced in the largest drug trial in history. Because it’s the right thing to do... It’s patriotic... to protect our community and, again, “although I am young and healthy, it’s the right thing to do” (Ohio Dept. of Health).

Mandate advocates often assert a need for a 95% immunization rate to achieve herd immunity. However, Mary Holland and Chase Zachary of NYU School of Law argue, in the Oregon Law Review, that because complete herd immunity and measles eradication are unachievable, the better goal is for herd effect and disease control. The best outcome would result, they argue, from informed consent, more open communication, and market-based approaches.

The safest place for an immunocompromised person who is unable to be vaccinated  (there are very few unable to be vaccinated for COVID) is around someone who has had COVID naturally and is actually immune. Vaccinated people still contract and likely transmit COVID unlike the naturally immune. Similar to the pertussis portion of the DTAP vaccine, most often it’s a vaccinated sibling or parent who unknowingly spreads it to an infant too young to be vaccinated.

Let’s think about our Governor DeWine’s Vax-a-Million. His raffle is a disturbing act of child coercion and misuse of money that we could be putting back into our communities. A predatory bribe to bait those who easily succumb to a gambling incentive. I wish we had this kind of monetary dedication to our homeless, to our schools, to our mental health hospitals, to our trash clean-up organizations for our cities, to students already accepted into colleges. To the small businesses who have had to close their doors for good. What are my incentives for not getting the shot? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Public health should not seek to manipulate. To manipulate in the name of public health is to undermine public health.

This is a marketing scheme. You are not required to take a liability free experimental medical intervention in order to be considered a good person. Those who say you are, are either indoctrinated into a cult-like way of thinking and lack the ability to see anything beyond that, uninformed, or evil.

It's one of many elite U.S. institutions to be completely decimated and humiliated by Pharma. It was gradual, then inexorable, and now it's their identity.

An article printed on May 31 states that a Miami Valley Hospital doctor says strokes are occurring in younger people, ages 18-45 years old. Dr. Bryan Ludwig, the chair of the Clinical Neuroscience Institute of Premier Health, is seeing this increase, including the 36-year-old stroke patient he treated upon being air-lifted to the main hospital campus (WHIO). This article does not yet state what leading causes we can look toward for the increase in strokes and clots in the youth, and does not even state a possibility of what it might be, though I’m sure we can make quite a valid assumption. It would seem that the press is trying to normalize things that are not in the least bit normal, as more articles arise in similarity. 

Was it responsible for our Governor Mike DeWine to send out the tweet: “FACT: The COVID vaccine is safe and effective” upon immediate availability of the vaccine?

It is incredible that vaccine reactions used to only exist in the minds of conspirators, and now we pray for the recipients that they may make it through and only have to miss a few days of work. We don’t know anything about long-term effects but that doesn’t matter, because what about long-term effects from the actual disease? Everyone needs to do it anyway, even those at very little risk, because someone said so. Even those who have had COVID, and likely hold a great deal of immunity. 

Those who came out in droves in opposition of HB248 stated things such as, “up to 30% of our college students are immunocompromised, and this justifies mandating those who aren’t to be vaccinated.”

What are we doing that is causing up to 30% of young college students to be immunocompromised? 

Nonetheless, I find that statistic entirely skeptical. The industry recommends for all who they call immunocompromised, such as cancer patients to get these vaccines, and patients on immune suppressive drugs to get them. They want transplant patients to get them. They don’t actually acknowledge any contradictions outside of anaphylaxis. The “we must protect the herd” sentiment seems entirely feigned and disingenuous. It seems manipulative, dismissive.

Surely, there are immunocompromised people out there who are unable to receive the vaccine or others, but I do think it is rare.

A doctor who believe that everyone should be vaccinated, when questioned, acknowledged vaccine injury and death. She was asked what she would say to those people. Her response, in paraphrase, was, “Thank you for your contribution.” She views the injured as expendable.

The amount of doctors who opposed the house bill of vaccine choice was frightening. And who will politicians follow? Those who have personal attestations who are most oftentimes unheard or underrepresented, or clinicians pushing a pharmaceutical curriculum that acquires compensation based on how many patients are vaccinated?

In a statement made by ACIP member, Grace M. Lee, M.D., M.P.H., associate chief medical officer for practice innovation at Stanford Children’s Health, she goes on to say: “I think the childhood experience our kids have gone through will have long-lasting consequences that may extend across generations. We don’t really fully yet understand the total... physical health, mental health, and educational impact of the pandemic on our kids.”

Kids are durable. They can endure the worst of things, and they persevere. However, now, to grow up in a world that is censoring and erasing valuable information is chillingly monumental.

Considering that 23 million Americans suffer from some type of autoimmune disease, with the rates increasing 4-7% each year, and that environmental toxins are well known to trigger autoimmunity, it would seem prudent to implicate the distended childhood vaccination schedule as a possible culprit to this rise.

We are not smarter or more virtuous than someone because we draw a different conclusion after looking at the same information. Only one side of this charade wants to enforce their will on the other.

In summary, patients and parents currently have the right to refuse vaccination, although potentially contagious persons can be restricted in their movements (e.g. as with Ebola), as needed to protect others against a clear and present danger. Unvaccinated persons with no exposure to a disease and no evidence of a disease are not a clear or present danger. Making the COVID, and other vaccines, optional is the only way to protect the medical and individual rights of our citizens, consistent with good medical ethics.

Unvaccinated people are variant factories, says expert Dr. William Schaffner, from the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on June 2.

My use of Uncertainty Reduction Theory in Communication Studies applied to my stance I’ve taken on medical freedom enables me to seek and find reassurance with others, to find camaraderie with those who will continue to fight. 

The way that I have questioned the pharmaceutical intervention so many times in so many ways throughout this discussion and at the very least find the timeline of events that have transpired to be odd, and furthermore advocate for the freedom of guilt-free choice instead of a blind acceptance to take whatever is fed to me via our government oversight, it may very well blacklist me from an exceeding amount of peoples’ interest.

BUT, no matter what one may think, or if one should ask me why I don’t find something better to do with my time -

What is more important than protecting my children’s freedom and health through social and ethical communication processes?

Works Cited:

Berger, C.R., & Bradac, J.J. (1982). Language and social knowledge: Uncertainty in interpersonal relations. London: Arnold.

Clanton, Nancy. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 16 April 2021. www.ajc.com

Holland, Mary and Zachary, Chase. Oregon Law Review. Children’s Health Defense Team. 23 January 2019. www.childrenshealthdefense.org 

Lavin, Dr. Arthur A. “The End of the Pandemic Begins, for the Vaccinated.” 14 May 2021. www.advancedped.com 

Lazarus, R, Klompas M, Hou X, Campion FX, Dunn J, Platt R. Automated Electronic Detection & Reporting of Adverse Events Following Vaccination: ESP:VAERS. The CDC Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA; April, 2008. www.digital.ahrq.gov 

Shimabukuro, Tom T. MD., Cole, Matthew MPH, Su, John R. MD, PhD. JAMA. 12 February 2021. www.jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2776557 

LegiScan Bringing People to the Process. www.legiscan.com 2021. 

National Vaccine Information Center. 2021. 21525 Ridgetop Circle, Suite 100, Sterling, VA 20166. 

www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?TABLE=ON&GROUP1=AGE&EVENTS=ON&VAX=COVID19

WHIO Staff. “Miami Valley doctor says strokes are increasing in younger people, shares warning signs.” 31 May 2021. www.whio.com/news/local 

[sirjustice1362]

ASK questions within ya mind

Speak to the devil as u ask and u hear a voice answering machine code answering u, ask like with the hurl on something method within ya mind, what should be the boom heap and environment and what u need to step on when making this and that kind of machine and at what time dispensation and u r answered dude

Ask who has created some1 and their names even with schools they are going to and ask how to create every race, the boom heap combination, environment, what u ought to hurl at what, chop or stir and all given and even with 1 race people the as the above

Ask what races are in one and get them women with the same all races of him not adding another or give him/her the created ones as they are sharp than born, locate allover the world instead of adding 1 on another dude to protect the world

As the greatest conservationists in the world and lyricist and answers given dude

Ask what u ought to do so the bullet gets u not or missile directed unto u stop apart from wearing the bullets i.e as with switch wire and the bulb what u ought to do so u fear the police not when wrong to outpace them and the people in time past who has used the same trick dude and currently which nations could employed the same on their enemies and if its the rudeness or pride and get to know dude

Ask who is in love with both the devil and the God who resigned and if planning to have sex and if all their powers taken and if one dies of being killed get off judgement and if buried without body being preserved how long they find themselves in heaven and who get them their

Ask the Devil to be hurled down from heaven and if he is incarnation and in what place he will fall and why and if will live long or get back to hell or heaven

Ask with each app as browser, search engine, chat, text, mobile money and any how can be made as u r answered as above b4 u undertake the procedure, mostly ask the process within ya compound easy way method dude

Ask how on the above layout how PG women different color chew its extracts stones are made and the remedy to side effects and get to know the same dude and even how artificial sand, interlocking bricks, stones with cross metal holes can be made or any as with the above and get to know dude

Ask how mini road making machines 4 ditches can be made as with the above of front or back width like 1 meter as in the link below and get to know dude

https://www.worldconstructiontoday.com/trends/construction-machinery-is-here-to-stay/

https://www.worldconstructiontoday.com/news/volvo-construction-equipment-and-norrhydro-develop-electro-hydraulic-solution-that-improves-fuel-efficiency-in-construction-equipment/

Ask what combination of heap, boom environment and the chop, stir or wash methods to make sky scrapers of shapes u want and what u can place on roads and pavements close to such high structures to be more tall like 200 - 1000 floors and most so u mention the widths as super slim of maybe 20M x 20M or 10M x 20M or 10M x 20M or 20M x 30M or 30M x 30M and if u don't give a hoot still not all that tall just ask per city the tallest sky scrapper can be built of how much floors and as above what need to be placed below such building and the options and given dude and ask this kind of tree makes which type or shape when place in sewer water, soil or any boom material and get to know and ask with of every structure machine and foods and even necessities and u hear it echoes within ya ears even without printing as step on method dude

Ask what kind of curse will befall 1 if they fail to listen to Kevy or kill him and the ripple effect to those who stole his pay-pal cash and who are they and what they used to buy and with who the cash was share and who motivated them to do the same bro and if they will give him back and the main reason why they want to kill him if at all if dude and ask as above the all processes to make digital grave tomb stone as with of Sofia Bulgaria

Satan and God here with ya so u stop or know and ask who wants to be the next GOD and why and if he will succeed dude and his character into it as he knew or was just lazy bro

Ask which tribes are jew and non jew and the ripple effect if the jew marry such and get to know dude

Ask which race has the best booty and worse and if this can marry that and if not respected the ripple effect to the couples and if its blasphemy and let us know dude

Ask who kill who and how they do it, where and when or why, take names of all the dead and find out dude and ask on water where each food or cash crop can grow and what need to be places, soil thickness and cover and even on land and the area in KM squired compared to which nation

And ask how rain that harbors all toxic fumes or products as hard drugs can be made in the boom and affect our soil and if so who did such to such foods affecting our guts and brain or system and why dude and where the Devil wants Nelson to live

Ask the richest women in the world currently and where they have invested with their cash as what properties they own

And they make monies using the amoeba place in people or Kids, where it gets to the belly disturb the kid, u rush to the pharmacy they give u expired drug as they talk with the amoeba to get off the belly 4 u to be okay and even with anti-acids drugs and even with those who transfigure does the same dude making a 100% profit as its a lie but on ya side kid or u okay as the drugs aint real but expired that needed to be discarded away and sometimes takes drugs from the nursing homes as doctors and nurses lies on the same so they bring to poor nations repacked and placed on chemistry shelves reaping profits as above dude

Ask who stole nelson northwhitehead padlock key and with who and u will be given and those disturbing him wanting his food and to grab his manhood and take his properties and list given dude

Now they make monies with electric meter swaying system, where u r encouraged selected parties to cook using coil and buy charcoal and return it in the night as one collects and even return gas cylinder in peoples mind used but not used as u use free electricity to cook as above dude. How they do it, is cut the wire getting to the kitchen main switch just one and place timers using solar as many got the solar automatic lights with connected by themselves wire to power such timers even if their is no electric power supply to stop the same to delude the whole happening, the timer disconnects the electric supply during the day or night depending on hours u use electricity much, they target cooking or fridge or ironing not to be noticed in the meter and the resort to bundle buying so not unearth, when in lights only and home appliances connected to the electric power meter and read on radar dude and when cooking the wire that gets into the meter connected behind the wood via the screw to binding wire back the the cut wire with fixed timer on the end that gets to the kitchen main switch so above surface and any1 as a power technician knows what am saying lest rectified dude as the only loop hole with the above, with scrap metal dealership many have ventured the into so profits shared dude to shy all of them away.

Ask who owns the new WSU dormitory or who helped build it and where the cash was gotten and answers given to ya dude as in the link below

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBD_enKE928KE928&sxsrf=ALeKk005qU3Nkr7rSClUypGTSve_24lTAA:1611479542950&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=names+of+wsu,+ks+dormitory&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWkeGNnbTuAhVlShUIHa8RCIYQjJkEegQIFBAB&biw=1280&bih=913

Ask which combination of products makes the best caskets or coffins and other methods underlying and answers given and see how used clean metal parts of welding shipped to Canada to built the same and ask KG goes 4 how much and that’s why they create mayhem 4 the same dude.

Ask if Gold is precious metal and what it means by the city in the bible where all its streets will be Gold and ask if it can be any city or not and now per KG gold cost what in Dollars per country dude

Ask if which city best in the world in snow time and in summer and why and even in ya continents and even ask which country will be the most attractive when all nations equally built and why and answers given

Ask if in Nairobi they mix paint with extracts of leaves, hay, grass, feces, water washed with pets remain, feces, urine, and which animal blood to give the city that feeling that its good than others only something and must be done to be above world cities

Ask when every nation can grow cash crops above the land surface or water or below as answers given which will be rich and even when food crops can grow such as the cash crops above to stop all ya lazy puzzles dude

Ask how many years remaining b4 the world ends and if there will be a new world created again and which people will form part

Ask who thinks another needs her Girlfriend to create beef while not and answers given

Ask who is disturbing the poor with their kids yet the rich are per your city and answers given dude

Ask how blood group of the fetus can be identified or the skull shape to avoid kids being shifted as one method as Fetus head skull non-light X-ray machine or blood group sensor or even pulse rate and temperature reader and given

Ask the devil the details of one when he gets to the bank or airport as with ID number, DOB, height, pulse rate, temperature, i mean all particulars and given to stop bank impersonation theft and even at times of Voting and registration and even if these man has transfigured or not all to bar the above b4 stepping on Cd hole as earlier said dude

Ask who deleted the nelson ask the devil innovation of light illuminate on solar panel generator and answers given to stop who is this invention or that and ask if a tribe or a group of people invented it and answers given or who gave them the same dude

Ask what are the lists of sins of blasphemy instead of every day debate and all given

Ask if their is final elimination in heaven and why and if firming is their and the people on earth who have reached heaven by what means, in which years and means of transport at what time dude

Ask why one talks much and less, the reasons underlying and given and ask who knows how to fuck or whose pussy sweet and why, if bought or not and which races of the world got kikuyu blood, big booty and hospitality, good tight pussy and everything and answers given, instead of everyday reproach dude

Ask who were the jew and who is sleeping with who even if between whites and non whites or who have slept with white woman or black women yet another race per ya area code and all their names printed dude

Ask where was the promised land and did the jew rich and who are they and who are every biblical tribe as the gentiles and given and kikuyu, luo were which tribes in the bible and Noah, Abraham and Adam even eve were of which tribe or spoke which language dude

Ask was kebi wrong at WSU or not and ask 4 justification and all answers given and ask if nelson is a con or list of what he has stolen with every1 and the list of such equipment given.

Ask how many times one has slept with one and answers given and ask the interior of the earth towards the outer space is made out of which material and how many people getting that material to be rich and in which part of the world and if much gotten out can the earth crack and the buildings the own with that and why within the tropics u cant do the same but towards temperate lands u can do the same and which nations knows about the same and how they get there dude

Ask what cash from forms great part of Kenyan national income and list of sold produce cash making the budget and with any nation and answers given dude

Ask all the artificial islands of the earth and new and answers given and where each tribe have store old along time weapons of war and list is given or endless dude

Ask what are the consequences or snake milk and which milk sold on the stores are of the same and with every animal to eject them out of the market and ask the best way to take each artificial food or drinks as some when cold break teeth and vice versa or cooked and uncooked and with all other side effects of every food and which boom methods of making the same has minimal side effects dude

Ask where every1 is currently stay what they own and where they plan to relocate in the future and answers given dude or ask which women, men, kids love everyday sex and vice versa and reasons with their names all given dude

Ask the lovers of school and church and all given, ask who wants to buy a property and same given. Ask those who are tire with life and why and even those wanna kill themselves and reasons give

Ask those are lying on northwhitehead nelson to get him killed and the property they say its on his name under who and their intent dude

Select a topic of preaching from the bible or speech and step on mentioning in lines what u want incorporated most and given to ya b4 the step way on CD hole as u know it as above dude, to eliminate this man sharp or this song, poem or writing ours u want to kill one to take dude and even with movies and dances dude

Ask on what products or things as grown foods if u hide bombs or guns inside by like cutting then joining with bladder or rubber band or in Balloons or CD can not be detected by the radar or metal/gun sensors and given and how many as the list of those who have employed the same and committed terror either in roads, airplane, train, house or in buildings and answers given bro, instead of police dubious acts of in pretense wanting others food, lifestyle and grab their manhood dude

Ask who has married who in secrecy and all the list per your town or area code given dude

Ask who were friends to and even lived with their friends or relatives and wants to kill them and reasons why and the planned attack and those snake can not bite and what if u do cut snakes when around like 10 KM away or what u do make them shy off u or cant bite ya and answers given dude

And ask personal mobile satellite server of 1000 KM or 500 KM can be connected to how many lines and if u cross line u pay the other phone company and if it will finish your nation phone company and the  combination u need to place as the heap, the chop process, stir, rub, gestures employed or all the method employed and the nature of the land u place the two or much heap that forms the same and ask if u want it shinny with non burnt part what u place with the heap and answers given dude, instead of rush as if a bed bug biting u to steal the same to be 1st as others do and given dude. With everything given

And ask those wanting good life 4 their kids without second though and mostly of which tribe or race or nation and list given to give them arrest as not disturb ya cause up-to no avail dude

ask who stole exams and answers given, who gave them and how much they pay and the whole deal who the get the script b4 people as with Tychus or wens or obat and if kevin nelson stole and which  

ask did my mother in virginia gave josephine cash as part of my visa and did Gilbert omwaka and Mr ngesa take voodoo from her to infuse my face from Rio dejenairo from colombia with juddie marie yep answer true bro  

ask who was angel Gabriel appeared to marry and answers given and Jesus son of God Or devil and Nelson who to devaura who created God and satan the 2 Gods and relationship btw devil devaura anda God and where Devaura lives and answer given dude. ASK WHO TAKE people to hell and who should be worshiped more  

ask who again shifted nelson brain or head and answer monicah, who sent her and reasons why and given bro and who is monicah to kebi and did she take photo of food with phone and who to give nelson and 4 what reasons and whom the sold greencard to in Newport NJ and how much and all those such sold 2 and killed so justice surface and heads behind the same to be arrested dude  

Ask the gimmicks under every healed person in the bible as blind beggar and demon possessed man was impersonation or eyes shifted as u know and ask if Jesus was Colombian or Hindu and the distinction between Colombians and Hindu and If all Hindus are Colombians and vice versa and all races of the world and people per your area code or voting list see things on their eyes to end the puzzle u r Hindu or not, if they refuse they refuse other boom making ways as machines, necessities and accessories, meaning they doubt those machines as they doubt the above answers meaning they are insane or accept not defeat dude

And even ask who the devil, devaura hates or love or not concerned above as much as with each race or tribe and nation dude and ask who wanted to kill NELSON in high school and why and all reason list given to a shame not the devil but the spirit in them

And ask those who had stollen NELSON to be given cash to start business as funeral collection 4 The Late Odhiambo Chui as George Odhiambo Ombuor and answers given and why and if there is any voodoo and by which people and if justified and if they will give Kevy that cash to start up a business

Ask if Jesus had sex and kids and all his kids up-to date and list endless and given dude and ask who owns the gramophone that Jesus father Banks had and the associated reasons behind it and where he had bought it and ask why Kikuyu now after knowing heaven there as much as planets, kinda, u see their habits rush to stop as bubble and answers given. And Ask why he was called chui while Kevy called Aroomtidy and where they want Kebi to get to as which nations and reasons why to defeat the devil

Ask which milk is made with which milk and components b4 u consume and how to make the big church money booth that is placed on the corners as in the link below

https://www.google.com/search?q=money%20booths%20used%20in%20the%20uk&tbm=isch&tbs=rimg:CQU2VaUrQatmYdP-UQchpNqg&client=firefox-b-e&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0QuIIBahcKEwjoiZr72LbuAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg&biw=1007&bih=654

With the above the prescribe medicine to people yet not sick but with as the above gimmicks and gain recognition though not known as professional doctors out of the description they give to win people and families

Electric power theft can end when wires with already paid or to be paid emanate from the meter high on the pole as st bulbs where the meter read via a phone app or portable tablet not on the house wall as breeds the above dude

SEND monies via mukuru as in the link below, a new African owned frontier

https://www.mukuru.com/how-to-send-money/

U see so u know, women should not control people in the economy lest, eating corpse, rude or poor, when of middle income police surface or they fear disrespect as their women might be prostitutes they hate out of the past tribe dude

Who wants to kill who and why as with nelson northwhitehead ask and the devil which tribe now in office and who appointed him and if he will go to hell or heaven and in the time past how many have resigned and why and those working in the devil office and if connected to world cities via a tunnel and which ones dude

Ask who are aids virus and any other and who brought/made such viruses and if fellow tooth brush or anything inserted in sand kills amoeba within ya system dude

Ask who the devil wanna kill and why and if u can kill the devil and how and ask 4 u to make machines or necessities what blood offering of which animals u ought to undertake and if u can make such without such

Ask how to defeat the devil or GOD or nelson, ask if Ksm good than Nairobi when equally made

If u stir in sand gravel cement fume or charcoal or on African

baskets or inside pot tuns not ya mind as gives no headache as associated with artificial products as flowers or fruits and even electric machine and gadgets to be original

In the timer above u can use self charging wet cell or just place exchange switch, with using unpaid electricity to reduce on ya bill dude

What u see when Rio de jenairo accepts ya, u get into where and if Canada accepts ya what u see behind ya and know that way dude

Who gave the sermons to mlk and Malcolm x speeches and told dude and who was given how to make bomb of japan bombing and share with who and was made where and if was paid and where took the monies and if the rudeness around and how they were planning to use it against their advisories in the world

Ask which cities of the world can host the tallest sky scrapper and with the ground side ways dimensions and on which new places on earth and why and what needed to be place per city to even harbor more tall one and the repercussion if such not placed dude

In creation who created who as it goes endless from God, to devaura and Satan and even satire and Plato and Antonio and from which family and if incarnation dude and if they know and who is great

Ask the city or town with the largest CD and the small CBD but with much office in sky scrapper and ask how many sky scrappers are their per every world cities and in like every island of Manhattan as as 4 a list and compare even with not just the CBD but metropolitan area and ask which cities in list in the world has the longest transit route in direction and distances and given and how many business building not more than 20 floors are their in each cities of the world, mansions, hotels, bungalow and flats and answer given to compare dude

Mummy Nelson ameishi kwa nyumba ya lo ama ni la, Bungalow, obango wuoth gi mandashi

Mummy thoka kwa matope am saying as my voice sublimes 3 times b4 again she get it not and say it again as warning her with loud voice as it fades going downwards and again and again b4 i hold her hands on both side to look her at the eye to stop. MUMMY pleath thoka kwa mathope and a thing my want not as u can get it dude

Ask who brought the bible to Africa and the verses that were added, omitted, committed or altered instead of everyday debate and given dude

Mochanda uliza Magdaline kama amesalaila na mimi, Tlina, uliza Minaj kama kebi ameshalaila na yeye

Ask which world cities has CBD with largest office space within the sky scrapper or business buildings and visa vie the general population and reasons give and ask if the devil currently in office was from the ghetto and why can not save his tribe and if u can sleep with her and the consequences. Ask how many sky scrapper NY has per all its islands

Ask if all dubious loopholes and getting Gold and all mentioned can Nairobi be still good and Kenya rich and ask 4 a list of all world cities and if much trees makes a city beautiful or which tree types makes the same

Ask what created anything as air, sand, soil or water or any physical features and ask again after answered those who created what u asked to be created to infinity and answers given

Ask how all amoeba can be killed and their hiding places and if new ones can be created as well with creation of every animal

Pals do get into one life and even of their family, mind ya life, respect the law as where u will get with all these laid as now u have known the truths dude of the lies bro

Who is the Negro lover described beautifully within Dreams from my father book and who once wrote the book 4 Obama to take and replace to be his

Ask how odowa can be made by stepping on a written name many times the sign up as signature fold and step on within CD hole on hay bar with cement or charcoal fumes, legs on spring to read mixed fruits extracts and veggies heap on corpse hand in grass land chilies and kale in the dark chop hay on wood soaked in milk in cassava or in hay or millet or in soil mud and boom ya answer dude

Or hay in guava in gone down place in tins with pineapple cut pieces on the sides as petrol filter, wash feet in hot sand with women in the dark as one hand rubbing on the wall with onion or with no leave onion 4 another type and if u rub another something else gives u another something else not the above as u rub guava cars but let the wall be bruised to see the cement or try with both if u rub hay gives ya charcoal dude and so forth so on bro

Church booths, hay in mango as heap, chop mango seed on wood with salt as u walk with it with bend posture bare footed on the house side looking the other side chop the same as walking but in the dark and boom ya booth dude or wash feet with surgical spirit as kids hurl u wish hot sand when cold or another product gives u another something else as heap can be inside house on gravel polished floor or on hay burnt gray fume wood deposit or on lime mixed with cement lands and boom ya other machines as u can keep on trying. If u hurl wall with ripe mango gives ya monies when heap that monies or photo with grass in cemented pond as well with other fruits or machine photos hurl with mango and mango seed on wall on grass or on anything as u can add thinner to the water as u step on every veggies, fruits, berries or small animals in egg like almost all immersed into the hole in sand, soil, mud with ya bear foot, shoes, sandal, box soul, Hyde and any and boom ya machine in the dark or dim light dude

With mukuru now make monies cashless, give people free handset to do the same changing its name to wireless money, with Mukuru print all pages and change as u wish with your wanted b4 crossing, then step on Cd hole within hay on mango heap, as u hurl cabbage cooked extract unto raw paw paw heap but in the dark and boom ya software on gone down place within ya yard heap placed on roses heap as a chicken breeds while if not cooked gives ya fake money app

Ask a question within ya mind even if u did not step on to print then u hear a play back answering you most so if u have looked into faces of people and be with kids most times as as the remedy 4 all artificial products and foods, what combination if u take eliminate the same syndrome as with produce of 1 boom heap break ya teeth 1st of press with knife or rules so ask the same and with machines made out of artificial fruits, veggies and leaves or berries as much as trees

[sunevial]

If youre still doing writing things, may i suggest the void college au. Maybe with other appearances from outsiders to the void.

intense rubbing of temples

Alright, so, in proper college AU fashion, no one’s going by their actual names because that would be too easy. Here’s a handy dandy list for you all:

Murder God: Chancellor Eris Scriven

Old Priestess: Damiana Barros, English and Mythology Graduate Student

Lieutenant: Oliver Lund, Psychology Graduate Student (transfered from ???)

Witch: Margaret Dupont, Senior Chemistry Major, Minor in Mathematics

Bookkeeper: Inaya Zaman, Senior History Major

Advisor: Claus Gorman, Junior Anthropology Major

Huntress: Alexis Marinos, Junior Kinesthesiology Major, Minor in Environmental Science

Part Timer: James Hartwell, Sophomore in Pre-Med 

Young Priest: Marcus Bennet, Freshman Arts and Business Double Major  

There will also be some appearances by some other ‘outsiders’:

Anabel: Anabel Novak, History and Linguistics Graduate Student

Star, Dragon of Creativity (belonging to @starprincesshlc): Murine Drake, Senior Creative Writing and Theater Double Major

Keshil, Dragon of Destruction (belonging to @balthazarssass): Ardal Drake, Junior Architecture, Mythology, and Archeology Triple Major, Minor in Management

Rea, Dragon of Restoration (belonging to @balthazarssass): Eithne Drake, Junior Agriculture and Biology Double Major

“Alright everyone, make sure to read the next four chapters of your textbook and prepare questions on the various gods and goddess of the people of Gual,” Damiana said, closing her book and beginning to wipe down the blackboard with the large felt eraser just as the clock struck one. 

Like clockwork, students began packing their bags and bolting for the door, most hurrying off to other classes or to second jobs. Marcus, on the other hand, remained in his seat in the third row, aimlessly flipping a pencil between his fingers and pulling out a sketchbook to pass the time. Getting accepted into Blackhollow’s School of Arts and Sciences had not exactly been in the plan when he had sent out applications, but free tuition and board was too good of a deal to pass up. 

Of course…Chancellor Eris’ stipulation that he serve on the school’s student governing board was…well, it felt a little bit like selling his soul. But in his opinion, it was infinitely better than shelling out thousands of dollars to a loan shark. 

“Enjoying the class, dear?” Damiana asked in the slowly emptying classroom, flashing a smile and a mischievous twinkle in her eyes under wire frame glasses. She was the instructor for Mythology 10, a teaching assistant by definition but the true mastermind behind the course. It was also a requirement for first years in the ‘Black Stars Governing Program’.

“Oh, um…yeah, it’s…really…interesting?” he replied, unsure exactly how to respond. He shifted ever so slightly in his seat. “Are we having a meeting today or…?”

“Just a small one,” she said with a light chuckle, taking her books and papers and stashing them into her knapsack. “We’re just going over some new changes to the college’s recruitment policy.”

“I…see,” he replied, setting down his sketchbook and picking up his water bottle. “I’ll be right back, I just need to get a drink.”

She gave a light smile and a roll of her eyes. “Take your time, dear. It’s not like anyone’s going to actually be on time.” 

Giving a small nod, Marcus slipped out of the classroom, weaving his way between the masses of students lining the hallways. The majority of classes were crammed into three small buildings that had outgrown capacity almost four years ago. As a result, trying to get anywhere fast was a contest of who could shove more bodies the fastest. 

“Hey Marcus!” a voice shouted from across the hall, followed by a frantic waving arm. Though he couldn’t see the incredibly short woman, he certainly could recognize Margaret’s enthusiasm. He could see Inaya, breaking up the crowd of people with a combination of height and a stare that screamed ‘murder’. Though in vastly different disciplines, one was never especially far from the other, the two of them bonded in sisterhood from something that had happened in their Freshman year. “See you at the meeting! I brought cookies this time!”

He gave a short wave, unable to really call out before getting swept along with the tide. Eventually breaking free of the swarm of people, he tucked himself into the corner near the water fountain for a moment of respite. Despite the lack of instructional space, the school had splurged for a water bottle tap, albeit one that filled at a snail’s pace. He unscrewed the cap to his water bottle, placed it over the sensor, and began his waiting game.

“Oh so this is the new guy you guys were telling me about!” a female voice exclaimed, jolting Marcus out of his skin as a hand came into his field of vision. It belonged to a woman with light brown hair and deep emerald green eyes, one who was smiling with curiosity sparkling in her eyes. “A bit jumpy for a black star though.”

“You might want to introduce yourself, sis” came the heavily exhausted voice of Ardal, curly black hair poking from around the corner. He was one of the few juniors in the Mythology 101 course, using the class as an elective for one of his his half a dozen majors.

“Yeah, I’m not sure the new kid knows you yet,” Eithne added, bright green hair bouncing free of her bun as she popped a piece of bubblegum. She and Ardal were twins, the similarities more-so in their looks than their personality, given they were either side by side or on opposite sides of the classroom depending on the day. 

The other woman blinked, a cheerful smile crossing her face. “Oh my apologies, I just get a little excited sometimes. I’m Murine Drake, the oldest of the bunch,” she said. “Creative Writing and Theater.”

Marcus slowly took the hand and gave it a shake. While he didn’t recognize Murine, he did recognize the Drake family name. They were an old family in Blackhollow, influential both in the political and financial realms on campus. Generally slow to anger, but certainly not people to piss off either. “Marcus…Bennet…Arts and Business,” he slowly replied, grabbing his water bottle just before it began to overflow. “How do you…know…”

“You could say I have the ears of a dragon,” she said with a laugh and a small wink. “I just like keeping tabs on everything and Oliver and I are old friends from…well, that’s a bit of a long story. How is he doing, by the way?”

“I don’t…talk with him a lot.”

Murine gave a quick nod, some slight understanding in her eyes. “Not surprising, he’s a bit on the private side. Could you tell him hi for me then?”

“Why don’t you just say it yourself?” said transfer student said, seemingly appearing out of nowhere and tapping her on the shoulder. With a laugh, Murine turned on her heels and gave Oliver a grin that nearly split her face. The two of them rapidly began conversing in a language Marcus didn’t recognize off the top of his head, the other twins jumping in not long after. 

Marcus glanced around, his eyes landing on a woman in short blonde hair gave him a small nod. Anabel Novok, a graduate students and the person teaching his history class. From her body langauge, she had likely been in conversation with Oliver just minutes before.“It’s Gaelic, if you were wondering,” she said, leaning her back against the wall. “The two of them met some time ago in Ireland.”

“That would…explain a couple of things,” he slowly replied, screwing the cap back onto his water bottle. 

“You’re heading to the meeting, I presume?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. He never precisely liked her eyes; it always seemed like she knew exactly what was spinning through his head. “Could you tell Inaya to meet me in my office later? I have some books she might find particularly interesting.”

He gave a nod. “I can do that.”Before he could get in a word about the course contents, the group of Gaelic speakers parted ways, the Drakes heading down the hall with a chorus of ‘goodbyes’ and ‘see you laters’. 

Anabel gave a small smile and nod to Oliver, waving them on their way. “I’ll see you later about that paper then?”

Oliver gave a curt nod in return. “Cafe on Charter?”

“As per usual,” she replied, standing upright and giving a small hand gesture. “Take care, you both. And watch carefully where the wind blows.”

Left alone with the black star’s technically-but-not-actual president, the two of them wordlessly headed back down the much less crowded halls now. Nearly everyone gave them a wide berth. While there was technically nothing outwardly imposing about the psychology grad, everyone could agree there was something…off about him. Maybe it was his mannerisms, maybe it was his general confusion about societal norms, maybe it was that ever present feeling that he was always watching.

Even so, they made good time with the lack of obstacles, quickly making it back to Damiana’s classroom. In the time he had been away, everyone else had already arrived. Claus was in deep discussion with Inaya and Margaret, the three of them passionately debating either philosophy or potentially last week’s episode of Game of Thrones. While Marcus knew he was a foreign student, anytime he had asked the rather quirky anthropology major, he had received about seven different answers in return. His best guess at this point was either Germany or Mars. Towards the back, Alexis and James sat side by side, her shoulder resting on his as the two of them discussed some of the local sporting events. They were a bit of an odd pair, given that she was often off hunting on the weekends and he preferred to experiment with robotics, but they seemed relatively happy together.

 “Ah there the two of you are,” Damiana said, walking up to Oliver and planting a quick kiss on his cheek. “Are we all ready to start then?”

“I think we are,” he replied, walking up to the front board and taking a seat in one of the empty chairs. Marcus quickly scuttled back to his seat as Damiana took her place behind her desk.

“Alright then, let this week’s Black Star meeting underway…”

[abrahamsen93dickens-blog]

Regulation And also Identification In The Life Stories Of Americans With Disabilities, Engel, Munger.

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As an example, I have a buddy that is adamant that the withdrawal process is vital to long-term soberness, even though evidence with nicotine substitute and also methadone upkeep suggests that lowering withdrawal effects boosts therapy efficiency for pure nicotine and opioid addiction, respectively. However the North Korean federal government has actually mostly headed out of the medication business, inning accordance with the United States State Department's 2013 International Narcotics Control Approach Record. There is loads of detail on the way that the data is cherry selected to show that a specific medicine is a lot better compared to the competition. The medications are currently supplied to clients with a 20 percent danger of establishing heart disease to assist maintain their cholesterol degrees in check.

[bryyo-data]

Okay I'm pretty sure I swore off discourse when I started planet-bryyo but hey, it's Christmas!

With regards to the Samus-out-of-her-suit discussion, it seems to be a pretty subjective matter. I keep trying to put my opinions into words, and I think I've narrowed down the issues I have. So this is JUST my personal take on the entire thing: what I like from Samus, what I think works well and doesn't work well. Feel free to disagree and even drop a comment in the replies, I'm open to a change of opinion!

(FYI I stole all my images off Wikitroid to break up the text)

Seeing Samus outside her suit is a neat reward. In the original Metroid, it lead to the very significant reveal that Samus was a girl. A lot of games tease the woman-behind-the-suit with stuff like reflections in her visor, or a view of her eyes and expression during a cutscene, so the game culminating with her completely out of her suit can be very rewarding and awesome if done well.

While I have a bit of a preference for stuff like badass suit shots or Fusion's lore endings (which I think were Japanese exclusive so I've only ever see them via the wiki) it can be really fun to see Samus just chilling in her spare time. Zero Mission does this pretty well; she dons regular outfits, goes back to civilisation, and does normal stuff like drink at bars. It's nice to see her get some down time, and hint at what her life is like beyond her missions.

On the other hand, blatant this-scene-only-exists-to-show-off-her-boobs scenes aren’t my thing. Y'know, I’m willing to say a bit of sexiness probably doesn't do much harm. I'd argue that some of the scenes we see in the likes of Zero Mission and Fusion endings (like the above) are acceptably, as youtuber ShayMay puts it, "sexy not sexualised" and detract far less, if anything, from Samus' portrayal. Samus is pretty without it being obnoxiously sexualized. And hey, we're all human, loads of us like a bit of boob. They aren't of much interest to me but plenty of people love 'em. In Metroid, though, it just feels a bit excessive and unnecessary at times, and I think it can impact how Samus and certain scenes come across.

The zero suit segment of Metroid: Zero Mission was a really interesting part of the game, with that stealth mission being challenging and fun to play. That's just about the only thing I ever liked regarding the zero suit, because almost every other instance of its appearance (including cutscenes in Zero Mission itself) is used to scream "HEY LOOK GUYS, SEXY BUTT." Personally, I just don't think those shots mesh well with what Samus is generally portrayed like. There's better ways to go about showing her suitless, like the variety of civilian outfits she's been presented in, or even simply taking off the helmet as in Prime. She can look very beautiful in these shots, without it looking blatantly sexualised and a bit ridiculous. Compare the above bar scene to this thing which always really bugged me because it's literally just butt and sideboob and the way it's posed looks really weird.

I find it a bit jarring when we go from the imposing figure of the power suit to the zero suit, which tends to be used to scream boob and not much else. For the most part, suited Samus carries this gravitas that makes her very impactful as a character. Unfortunately, that gravitas pretty much instantly evaporates when she's put in a blatantly sexy shot on screen, no matter what she's saying or doing. Note that there IS a difference between "blatantly sexy shot" and "shot where Samus is not in her suit" and the latter would be no issue. We see that in the likes of Other M's ending, where she's in civilian clothing and can look nice without the camera lingering on her rear end too long and killing the impact. I have my issues with how Other M did things, but at least IIRC it didn't derail that ending moment with Anthony by making it weirdly sexy, unlike a few other parts of the game which I'll come to in a bit.

I don't think sexiness is automatically bad- see Bayonetta for what I guess is an example of sexiness done in a good, not-disempowering or disrespectful way? I guess? I haven't played those games. But sexiness in Metroid is put in places where it feels out of place. Zero Mission and Other M are bad offenders; the latter two Primes only have like one scene of it, so it's odd but can be more easily passed over if you aren't into the uncanny valley robot tiddy look from Prime 2 that haunts me to this day.

Hunters did the out-of-suit thing quite nicely too. Hunters stands as evidence that even the zero suit doesn't have to be inherently bad (though let's be real, it was designed for tiddy and it will probably be used for tiddy until the end of its days). Hunters was actually my intro to the franchise and the first time I personally saw the face of Samus Aran. If you beat Hunters before developing carpal tunnel syndrome, and if you access the hidden ending by fulfilling the Alimbic prophecy, the monster Gorea is destroyed in its final form and the Alimbic spirits telepathically contact Samus to thank her for what she has done. There's a lack of obnoxious proportions or questionable camera angles, so the scene comes across as meaningful as it's supposed to.

Prime did well in combining the thrill of "IT'S HER, IT'S THE PROTAGONISTS FACE" with the badassery of suited Samus, giving the scene quite a good impact. People remember that scene with fondness. It's a shame that so few scenes with non-suited Samus have managed to capture the same thing- like, imagine Samus standing on a hill in a long coat or some other awesome piece of apparel, gazing over a futuristic city like a watchful guardian. That would be sweet.

I personally liked the more realistic look they went for in Prime, despite technical limitations on the face model; it suited the tone of the game and the personality of Samus better than the weird anime kinda thing in Prime 3. You can get away with that look in the 2D games where everything has that art style, but all the other humans in Prime 3 were more realistic so it just looked out of place (we don't talk about Echoes...) but that's verging on a different issue entirely.

Zero Mission is one of my favourite games, possibly my favourite 2D game on par with Samus Returns at the minute. It did really well in a lot of stuff, but it also has a degree of booty with bad timing. The moment after Samus crashes and is left with nothing should be a fairly serious one- the situation is bleak, the task up ahead is daunting. The only hope you have is Samus' confidence and skill- and your skill as a player, which, if you're anything like me, you're starting to question in a moment of utter oh shit. This is also one of the few moments where Samus actually has some dialogue, which is all pretty straightforward with a hint of her good humour and personality.

That entire scene is framed over a very blatant butt shot. Maybe it's just me and I ought to care less, but I find it a bit harder to take the scene seriously because of it. Sexiness isn't inherently bad, there's a time and place for it, but is this serious scene really the time and place? I'm not even gonna pull up big words like objectification and such, I don't really know enough to say about those things, I just think it looks really silly there. If it needs to be included, couldn't it stay as the under-five-hours reward as per usual?

I could just be really bitter about that one, though.

Buff Samus is another related issue. I've seen loads of people saying "Samus looks good as she is!" and there's nothing wrong with that. I just thought I'd try and justify my own reasons for being a bit let down with Samus' current out-of-suit design. It's not so much the design in itself, nor the fact that she's not what the fandom fantasizes her being like. It's more related to the design's history and trends of change.

Personally, I'm just a little bitter that they felt the need to change Samus from the design they gave her in Super, because of WHY they changed it. In Super Metroids manual- and visibly in-game- Samus is toned and tall. These days, the media is gracing us with more tall and buff lady characters (Zarya from Overwatch, Brienne of Tarth from GOT, etc.) but when I was a kid I don't think I could name a single muscular lady outside of joke cartoon characters. Maybe sportswomen, but even then I can't think of any popular ones whose names I haven't learned in just the last few years. Doesn't mean there weren't any, just that I never came across any widespread ones, and I'm inclined to believe there weren't many around in popular media. Which made a taller, buffer Samus a little bit more of a revolutionary concept, important for the sake of seeing varied body types and such. It's important for people with those body types as much as it is for everyone else SEEING people with those body types and lifestyles.

Basically, as far as I can tell, Nintendo decided that "sex sells" and their major lady protag wasn't good enough without the sex appeal that comes with being skinny and shapely. They decided buff wasn't attractive, so they had to do things like cut her height down, slim her waist, bring out her chest, and make her ass stick out half the width of Zebes. Everything she was allowed to be before was stripped away and swapped out for your standard sexy woman's frame so people could titillate over her.

This only increased over time. Going from Zero Mission to Other M and the Smash Bros franchise, you can see this increasing trend of Samus getting promoted in-game and in pre-release material as sexier, up to Smash Bros 4 where so many Zero Suit promotional screenshots had her bent around like the token sexygirl in a forgettable Hollywood movie poster, posed for good view of her assets, or even put in freaking bunny ears which have their own set of connotations. Then there's the whole heels debate, which I'm not even gonna get into.

Her boobs are orbs.

If I'll say one positive- Samus Returns didn't do badly. Actually, big kudos to Samus Returns. All of its ending poses were all nods to other stuff for fans to recognise and they took time to make three different out-of-suit Samus outfits. Samus genuinely looks pretty cool in each of them. I really dig it!

I think some people in the fandom have the misconception that me- and others who share my opinion- don't like the idea of sexy women, or feminine women, being badass heroines. And that's simply not the case. People bring up Bayonetta as an example of "you can have sexy/pretty heroines" and while I can't really say a lot about her, as far as I can tell, her game really works well with it and is designed around her having the appearance and personality she has. Metroid is designed around a different sort of protagonist, in a different sort of atmosphere, and the sexualisation is kind of jarringly different from the surrounding material.

If Samus had always been a shortish, big-breasted woman with a strong personality and whose ass and boobs were never/scarcely highlighted in a sexy way, indicating that they exist just because she is a shapely person rather than because people won't survive the game without a boner, that would be sweet. In fact, I could really get behind that because I'm short as hell myself. It's secretly every short person's dream to have a cyborg suit which makes you tall enough to reach the top shelves and fight off everyone you're otherwise too small and weak to handle.

(Had Samus always been a sexy Bayonetta-esque character, I think the franchise would be very different in general. If that was part of the design, it would’ve worked, I guess.)

It's not Samus' size, shape, and proportions in themselves that have the effect of changing the scenes and character portrayal; it's the blatant fanservice and the way they're framing of these features to obviously have a very sexual appeal, and to me that doesn't sit well alongside the rest. When serious scenes are played over what looks like a SFW alt version of a porn pic you glance over while scrolling down the Metroid tag, it’s hard to see any of the impact that Samus had one scene earlier in her power suit. (Okay, I'm exaggerating a little for effect, but the point still stands.)

This peaks in games like Other M (disclaimer: I'm not a fan, apologies to fans of the game) where tragic and meaningful scenes are played over shots of Samus’ butt… like, it’s obvious what they were going for here. I’ve never been a straight male member of the obvious target audience for this so I can’t attest to whether the dual boner-and-tears method works at making a scene memorable, but for the most part it just looks silly from my point of view.

When Samus loses her suit in Other M- e.g. when Adam dies- and all the subsequent shots focus in on her rear end, it really doesn't feel like just about any suited shot in any Metroid game ever, and not in a good way. Like I think I said before, it strips Samus of a degree of gravitas that is integral to her character. Then it tries to play the moment off with a degree of seriousness and dignity that framing her ass like that just doesn't quite have.

(Then again, Other M Samus' lack of gravitas comes across even in the scenes where she's in her suit; this time it's nothing to do with sexualisation or anything, just that her postures and movements don't display any confidence in what she's doing, which is weirdly different from her normal presentation but persists throughout the entire game. Some people like it, I don't think it works, each to their own.)

I've sorta lost track of where I was going so I'm gonna round off here. I'll emphasise that this is all my opinion and interpretation, I don't expect everyone to agree and I completely respect that. I think it's absolutely fair to love Samus while being critical of how her designers portray her and the wider impacts of those choices- at the end of the day, she is fictional and doesn't make these choices for herself. As the audience, we are the ones who feel those choices, for better or worse depending on your own view.

I'm a bit salty about how Samus is portrayed outside of her suit and wish the Samus on the inside was allowed to carry the weight that Samus in the suit does. That doesn't mean she can't be beautiful, but the active increase in her sexy traits and highlighting of those traits over the years is a little bit infuriating, especially considering what they were willing to do with her design early on in the timeline.

Feel free to drop comments, I'm going to try and steer clear of my own salt for the rest of the holidays but I'm keen to know what other people think!

[faithfulnews]

How a small third world country became the top economy in Latin America

South America Map

So, I’ve been watching the Democrat debates, and I’ve noticed that all of their candidates are proposing economic policies that they say will improve the lives of Americans. But have the candidates ever been able to try out these policies, and proven that they work? One way to evaluate policies is to look at other countries that have tried them, to see if those policies are proven to work.

I’ve been reading a book called “Money, Greed and God” with my friend Carla, which talks about what does and does not work to alleviate poverty. The author basically outlined two approaches. In the first approach, the government 1) confiscates the wealth of the most productive workers, 2) nationalizes (takes control of) the businesses of the most successful entrepreneurs, 3) restricts trading between citizens and with other countries, with minimum wage, price controls and tariffs. In the second approach, the government does the opposite: 1) lowers taxes on the most productive workers, and 2) lets entrepreneurs compete to provide goods and services to consumers, and 3) lowers restrictions on internal trading and trading with other countries, e.g. – eliminating minimum wage, tariffs and price controls.

Let’s take a look at two Latin American countries that went in opposite directions. Venezuela and Chile. Then we can finally find out which policies actually achieve results for the people.

Here is how Chile started out in 1973.

PROBLEM: Price controls and tariffs:

Prices for the majority of basic goods were fixed by the government in 1973. Even though Chile was and still is a small economy, the level of protection­ism was high. By the end of 1973, the nominal average tariff for imports was 105 percent, with a maximum of 750 percent. Non-tariff barriers also impeded the import of more than 3,000 out of 5,125 registered goods. Just as economic theory predicts, large queues in front of stores were usual in Santiago and other cities in Chile as a result of the scarcity caused by price controls.

PROBLEM: Government taking over private businesses:

The decline in GDP during 1973 reflected a shrinking productive sector in which the main assets were gradually falling under government control or ownership through expropriations and other government interventions in the economy.

PROBLEM: Deficit spending and government printing money:

The fiscal situation was chaotic. The deficit reached 55 percent of expenditures and 20 percent of GDP and was the main cause of inflation because the Central Bank was issuing money to finance the government deficit.

SOLUTION: lower or eliminate restrictions on trade:

The most important economic reform in Chile was to open trade, primarily through a flat, low tar­iff on imports. Much of the credit for Chilean eco­nomic reforms in the following 30 years should be given to the decision to open our economy to the rest of the world. The strength of Chilean firms, productive sectors, and institutions grew up thanks to that fundamental change.

SOLUTION: let competing entrepreneurs in the private sector provide goods and services to consumers:

A second fundamental reform was to allow the private sector to recover, adding dynamism to the economy. In fact, important sectors such as elec­tricity generation and distribution and telecommu­nications were still managed by state companies. After we implemented a massive privatization plan that included more than 50,000 new direct share­holders and several million indirect (through pen­sion funds) shareholders, these companies were managed by private entrepreneurs that carried out important expansion plans.

SOLUTION: let people take responsibility for their own lives instead of depending on government:

The 1981 reform of the Chilean pension fund system deserves special mention. Under the leader­ship of Minister José Piñera, an individual capitali­zation account program was designed with specific contributions, administered by private institutions selected by the workers. The Chilean Administra­doras de Fondos de Pension (Pension Fund Administrators or AFP) has been replicated in more than 20 countries, and more than 100 million workers in different parts of the world use these accounts to save for retirement.

SOLUTION: allow parents to choose the school that fits their needs from competing education providers, and push school administration down from the federal government to the municipal level, where it would be more responsive to voter’s needs:

In 1981, Chile introduced a universal educational voucher system for students in both its elementary and secondary schools. At the same time, the central government transferred the administration of public schools to municipal governments…  The financial value of the voucher did not depend on family income.

RESULTS: And I was able to find a nice short, description of how all that worked out for them on the far-left Wikipedia, of all places:

The economy of Chile is a high-income economy as ranked by the World Bank, and is considered one of South America’s most stable and prosperous nations, leading Latin American nations in competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption.

In 2006, Chile became the country with the highest nominal GDP per capita in Latin America. In May 2010 Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD. Tax revenues, all together 20.2% of GDP in 2013, were the second lowest among the 34 OECD countries, and the lowest in 2010. In 2017, only 0.7% of the population lived on less than US$1.90 a day.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Chile is ranked as the 18th freest economy in the world. The World Bank ranked Chile as the 50th highest GDP per capita for 2018, just below Hungary and above Poland.

Now, you can contrast those results with Venezuela. I have been blogging about Venezuela for years on this blog, and documenting how they raised taxes, banned guns, nationalized private sector companies, raised tariffs, and increased regulations. They are now ranked JUST ABOVE NORTH KOREA for economic freedom – #179 out of 180 countries measured. Basically, they did the opposite of everything that Chile did – transferring power away from parents, workers, business owners, churches and municipal governments to the powerful centralized federal government.

Wikipedia explains how Hugo Chavez took over in 1999 and enacted a communist revolution.

More:

Since the Bolivarian Revolution half-dismantled its PDVSA oil giant corporation in 2002 by firing most of its 20,000-strong dissident professional human capital and imposed stringent currency controls in 2003 in an attempt to prevent capital flight, there has been a steady decline in oil production and exports. Further yet, price controls, expropriation of numerous farmlands and various industries, among other government authoritarian policies… have resulted in severe shortages in Venezuela and steep price rises of all common goods, including food, water, household products, spare parts, tools and medical supplies; forcing many manufacturers to either cut production or close down, with many ultimately abandoning the country as has been the case with several technological firms and most automobile makers.

They confiscated private property, took over private sector businesses, implemented tariffs and price controls, redistributed wealth via massive welfare programs, and pushed all decision-making out of families and municipal governments up to the federal government. By depriving the producers of their earnings, the country caused massive shortages of goods and services, to the point where people are fleeing the country, consuming zoo animals, and selling their bodies as prostitutes in order to get food and water.

Application

In the next election, we are not picking a tribe because of how they make us feel about ourselves. We are not choosing in order to see ourselves as “nice” and “not nice”. We need to look at specific policies being proposed, and see what works and what doesn’t work. The examples of Chile (rags-to-riches) and Venezuela (riches-to-rags) are helpful for voters who want to get RESULTS instead of FEELINGS.

I’ll leave you with a list of links from previous posts so you can see how communism worked out for Venezuela.

Related posts

Before socialists in Venezuela could run over protesters, they had to ban gun ownership

Venezuela solves hunger by banning bread lines, and solves crime by banning self-defense

And now slavery: Venezuela’s socialist policies lead to forced labor camps

Do young Americans know how well socialism is working in Venezuela?

How well are Democrat Party economic policies working out in Venezuela?

How well does socialism work in countries and cities that adopt it?

How well are Democrat economic policies working in Venezuela and Argentina?

Marco Rubio’s speech exposing the horrors of socialism in Cuba and Venezuela

Obama silent as Venezuelan government violently represses democratic opposition

How well is government-run health care working out in socialist Venezuela?

Venezuela orders soldiers armed with assault rifles to impose price controls

An honest look at the many contributions of Hugo Chavez to Venezuela

What causes Colombia’s economy to grow? What causes Venezuela’s economy to shrink?

Socialist government of Venezuela announces devaluation of their currency

Obama’s buddy Chavez nationalizes an American company

Venezuela legislature votes to nationalize 11 US-owned oil rigs

80,000 tons of food rotting in Venezuela government warehouse

Hugo Chavez confiscates private property as Venezuelan economy declines

Owner of the last anti-Chavez TV station arrested in communist Venezuela

OAS report details violence and lost freedoms in communist Venezuela

Photos from the revolution against communism in Venezuela

Venezuelans riot as communist Hugo Chavez seizes control of TV channel

Hugo Chavez says that Haiti earthquake was caused by secret US weapon

Chavez marches Venezuela down the road to serfdom at gunpoint

Communist Venezuela introduces energy rationing in 2010

Hugo Chavez shuts down 34 radio and TV stations in Venezuela

Venezuela nationalizes Spanish-owned bank

  Go to the article

[motorcyclegear101]

What Type Of Motorcycle Should I Get As A Beginner?

There are nine types of motorcycles that a beginner should consider before buying a bike. There is the Adventure Bike, Sport Bikes, Cruisers and many more.

The Nine Types Of Motorcycles A Beginner Should Consider.

Standard Motorcycles

Sport Bikes

Cruisers

Scooters

Touring Motorcycle

Sport Tourer

Dirt Bikes

Adventure Bike (ADV)

Dual Sport Bike

Today we’re going to talk about some of the various categories that exist in today’s motorcycle market. We are going to help you figure out what type of motorcycle you should get as a beginner.

We are going to break down those classes so you know exactly what type of bike you might want to look at when you walk into a motorcycle dealership.

I’m going to be talking to you about some of the features of each of these bikes that help them be good at a certain task, we’re going to debate some of the pros and cons of those features of the motorcycles themselves.

My job in this article is not just to explain the features of each bike but to also talk to you about how the bike feels from an ergonomics standpoint. Keep in mind there’s a lot of you out there that might have fallen in love with a certain style of bike, for example, a sportbike.

A sports bike may look awesome, looks fast, hardcore lines and that bike might be appropriate for aggressive riders on a track day, but it’s probably not the most appropriate machine if you’re commuting back and forth to the office on a regular basis.

While we’re not intending in this article to tell you what bike is right or wrong for you, what we would like to do is give you some recommendations about what you can expect from each of these machines and how it’s going to affect the riding that you’re doing.

Remember the style of riding you might think you’ll be doing might be a lot different than the riding you actually do.

Because these bikes are constructed differently they come in all shapes and sizes, much like many riders and this means they interact with people’s bodies differently.

For example, if you are sitting on a motorcycle and your feet are firmly on the ground and you feel like you have complete control of the bike this is going to instill confidence in you right from the get-go, especially for beginners.

If you have any doubts about whether or not the motorcycle is right for you, the same way you would try on a pair of jeans or clothes before you buy them to try out the bike.

I’m not talking about a test drive, I’m talking about walking into your dealership, putting your ass in the seat, grabbing the handlebars and sit on the bike for 10 or 15 minutes to see how you feel.

We’re going to break this article down very very simply. We’re going to kick things off with street bikes. If a bike was made to roll mostly on the pavement we’re going to be talking about it in this first section.

Standard Motorcycles

Let’s kick things off with one of my favorite classes of a bike and that is the standard. Standard motorcycles usually fairly sporting machines and they’re best exemplified by having no fairing fitted. These bikes are generally fairly naked, you’ll hear that term use from time to time.

These motorcycles are not the perfect tool for any job, however, they can handle lots and lots of different scenarios with ease.

For instance, a Suzuki SV650 could very easily be taken to a track day but it’s also comfortable enough that you wouldn’t mind taking an all-day trip on this motorcycle, it’s a very versatile machine.

These bikes are updated all the time and the model that is available now may be slightly different but the size and shape of any of the new models will give you the same feel as any previous models. What you are looking for is not necessarily the models I mention here but the shape and style.

There are no surprises as to why the Suzuki SV650 style of motorcycle is going to be a do-anything machine, it’s great for new riders.

If you were to site on this type of motorcycle and grab hold of the handlebars your hands would be directly in front of you.

There’s maybe a slight drop to the handlebars which means you would have a little bit more weight on your wrist, but that’s going to benefit you as a rider because it puts a little more pressure on the front wheel which makes the bike easier to steer.

Standard Motorcycles

The other thing you’ll notice is your shoulders aren’t quite perpendicular to the ground, they’re a little bit more forward than your hips but then your feet are going to be directly underneath you. Your feet should be able to reach the ground so you have firm control of the bike.

Sport Bikes

Next up we have the sportbike. Sportbikes are patterned after road racing machines, you’ll notice how sleek and aerodynamic these bike look and that’s in part due to the plastic fairings on these types of motorcycle.

Sportbikes are good for racing if you are planning on doing a track day and you can also use them on the street too. I’d say they’re probably best used for shorter more spirited rides due to the aggressive body position, it’s hard to remain comfortable for most riders on a sportbike for a really long time.

The other reason I wouldn’t probably recommend these for a beginner unless you’re in the beginner class of sportbikes is that the larger machines like the Yamaha R6 or larger bikes generally are extreme machines and when I say that I mean that a lot of different senses.

They’re very very fast, they also have razor-sharp braking and handling which doesn’t really bode well for a beginner who might not have mastered inputs on the motorcycle. The other thing that’s really extreme on these sportbikes is body positioning.

If you sit on the sports bike you will notice right away the aggressive body position.

Sport Bikes

Your hands are at or slightly below or your knees. Your shoulders are pitched forward, your ass is pushed way back as are your feet and that’s going to put you in a really aggressive tuck down position.

This is a great position if you are planning on aggressively riding or tackling a track day but if you’re just commuting back and forth from home to work for 30 to 45 minutes it’s not going to be comfortable.

That’s not to say that there are no riders out there that do it, there’s plenty of riders that commute on these types of bikes but we’re just going to say that this might not be the most appropriate machine to do that on.

Especially when you consider some of the more advanced race-style mechanics on this bike like the suspension.

For example, if you’re using this on the street and you start to hit potholes it will be transmitted back to the rider which can cause you to feel a little bit uncomfortable so the sportbike might not be the best machine for beginners.

Cruisers

This bike is arguably the antithesis of a sportbike and that is the cruiser. Cruisers are bikes built for a nice long low cruise as the name implies.

These bikes prioritize comfort over speed, now there’s a couple of characteristics about a cruiser that make them particularly good for beginner riders.

The first is that these bikes even though they have very large engines, they have very large engines that deliver very controllable power. They’re typically very forgiving for beginners who happen to make some mistakes.

One of the other things that makes them particularly suited to beginning riders is the fact that you’ll notice the front wheel is kicked out just a little bit.

The frame has a little more rake and by having that front-wheel out there it makes the steering and handling a little bit more controllable on this motorcycle. Again also forgiving to rookies who might happen to make a mistake or two now.

There’s a class of rider who might be very interested in the cruiser and that’s people who are vertically challenged. If you’re a shorter rider a cruiser is almost universally a good choice because just about every one of them across the board has a very low seat height.

This means that even if you’re not a large motorcyclist, even if you’re on a large motorcycle you’ll find yourself able to easily control the bike. These motorcycles are built for comfort, not for speed.

On a cruiser, you will be in a much more of a slouched riding position with your hands slightly above your shoulders. Your shoulders are going to be kind of like slouched back with your ass almost kicked out in front of your shoulders a little bit.

Cruisers

Your feet are going to have two different options. They will be either kicked out in front of you using a forward control or your feet just slightly below your hips. That’s going to be a much more comfortable riding experience.

I personally prefer the forward position when I’m riding a cruiser, I find that to be just a little bit more comfortable for me, so even among experienced riders riding the same bike, there’s not even a consensus necessarily what is right.

I’m going to kind of reiterate what we told you the first time around and that is to spend some time on a bike, sit on it, it’s not weird at all to be in a showroom or perhaps to park yourself on a used bike and just ask for 10 or 15 minutes to make sure the bike is comfortable for you.

Scooters

Now we come to the class of motorcycle that offers more miles per gallon than just about anything else and that is the scooter. Scooters are kind of interesting, scooters are offered in a variety of sizes, the smaller bikes are excellent for in town work.

If you live in an urban area and you want to just run some errands scooters are absolutely perfect.

There’s also a larger class of scooters known as maxi-scooters and those are much much bigger with more powerful engines and they can actually attain motorcycle speeds, in fact legally they’re actually classified as motorcycles.

They offer lots and lots of storage capacity and taking a really long trip on one isn’t out of the equation at all.

Scooters are built a little bit differently than a regular motorcycle, looking at one it obviously visually much different.

Lett’s go through some of the construction features that make it a little different from some of the other bikes we’ve talked about.

First, let me direct your attention to the wheels, you’ll notice the wheels are a much smaller diameter than the other bikes we’ve looked at. Generally, these contribute to the easy handling nature of a scooter, note the platform of the scooter step-through design is sort of a hallmark of this scooter.

It’s entirely different in terms of where your feet sit and really almost every other motorcycle out there on the market. There is also plenty of storage, believe it or not, there’s a surprising amount of cargo-carrying capability on a scooter, especially relative to its size.

With the exception of older scooters, almost every single one of them has an automatic transmission so if the prospect of learning to drive a manual transmission vehicle is kind of daunting for you a scooter might be the perfect gateway into the world of motorcycling.

When you’re sitting on a scooter from a body position standpoint your hand bars are definitely closer to you than anything we’ve talked about so far.

Your hands are almost sitting at your knees and your shoulders are still right on top of your hips but your legs are definitely more in front of you than anything else.

If this was a motorcycle your feet would be sitting right where the engine would normally be, I think if you’ve never ridden a motorcycle before you’re not going to notice that, but for those of you that are coming of an MSF course where you’ve been practicing on a bike, getting onto a scooter might be a little of a different experience.

You do have a lot more room and you do have that clear planted feel to the ground and because these things are so lightweight you’d never feel like you’re intimidated.

The other point to make is if you are coming off an MSF course this is not to be confused with a motorcycle, you need to remember a scooter is an automatic.

Don’t grab that front lever thinking it’s a clutch because it’s actually a brake lever as you will throw yourself right over the front, other than that it’s a fun little machine you learn how to ride a bike.

Touring Motorcycle

Your touring bikes also called dressers or baggers, touring bikes are meant to carry lots of stuff at high speeds for long distances. The signifying factor that makes a bike a touring bike is a large storage often integrated right into the motorcycle.

You will notice these touring motorcycles have some huge saddlebags and the street glide we tested is actually one of the more stripped-down touring bikes you can put your money down on. A lot of full touring bikes also have a top case or top box on the back for additional storage capacity.

Because these bikes are meant to be ridden for long distances the manufacturers typically make them very comfortable for riders, and I mean that in terms of both seating position as well as appointments on the motorcycle.

It’s not uncommon at all on a touring bike to see full audio systems and navigational aids just in an effort to make a rider’s ride as good as possible.

The touring bike providing lots and lots of comforts, again these are meant to keep riders happy in the saddle for quite a while. Out of all the bikes we’ve talked about so far this is the one that’s definitely big enough to fit from my size standpoint.

There’s plenty of room for you to move around and what you will see is a mix of two different types of body positions. From the waist up your in a very neutral position.

Your hands are out in front of you, wider handlebars with plenty of leverage and your shoulders are above your hips. This is a comfortable upright seating position which is great when you are traveling long distances.

Touring Motorcycle

From the waist down with these floorboards you have a couple of different options for where you can put your feet.

You can kick your feet out a little bit if you want to give you more stretched out for control, or you can slide your feet back and use it for more leverage as if these were mid controls.

There are plenty of options for you to move around and find what position works well for you.

In addition to the rider comfort, there’s also plenty of room at the back for a passenger so they can move around comfortably too but that’s going to bring us back to weight.

These bikes weigh around seven to eight hundred pounds, you throw a passenger in the mix and it’s a pretty heavy ride, especially considering that while I can get my feet on the ground it’s still going to be hard to leverage its back and forth if I’m not really comfortable with the machine.

We’re not here to tell you what’s right or what’s wrong for your first motorcycle and we are not going to steer you away from any type of bike but if we did this would be one of them just because of how large this is.

It’s not going to instill confidence right from the get-go for new riders and it’s heavy so not one we would recommend.

Sport Tourer

One of the other bikes I want to talk about before we move on is actually kind of a throw to a blend of motorcycles we’ve already talked about and that’s the sport-tourer. It’s a mixture of a sportbike as well as a touring machine.

Typically you’re going to give up a little bit of carrying capacity with a sports tourer, generally, they can’t carry quite as many things as a straight-on touring bike but these bikes are considerably faster than a straight touring bike.

One of the other hallmarks of this breed of a motorcycle is the aerodynamic fairings. They’ll typically be very sleek looking motorcycles and the riding position is sort of middling as well.

You won’t see the full upright position but you’re also not going to be somebody on a sport-touring bike all wadded up in that uncomfortable sport position either, it sort of split the difference.

Sport Tourer

Before we move on I do want to mention something else about positioning. You may have noticed that just about every bike we’ve talked about has had a pretty neutral or intermediate riding position with the exception of the cruiser and the sportbike.

Both of those are kind of at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Most manufacturers are shooting to that sort of neutral riding position and the reason I bring that up is that it’s a very successful riding position.

The reason you see it on so many motorcycles is because so many motorcyclists are comfortable in that position, so if you do find yourself gravitating towards one of the bikes, again toward the outside ends of the spectrum whether it be sportbike or Cruiser.

I would encourage you to spend a little bit of time on one of those more intermediate bikes just to see what else is out there.

Dirt Bikes

When you say off-road motorcycle to most people the thing that jumps into their head immediately is probably something like a dirt bike. These bikes are made to tackle the roughest terrain that Mother Nature has to offer and as such, they’re constructed in a very specific way.

Let’s start with a couple of those features.

The first and probably most noticeable are the tires. You will see that they are very nobly super aggressive tires made to bite into the loose surfaces dirt bikes are typically ridden on. The other thing to notice about this bike is how tall it is.

It has lots and lots of suspension travel, it also sits very high up and that’s because dirt bikes are meant to roll over some obstacles. From trees to logs and rocks they all get in the way. Having a bike that sits up high prevents the bike from being damaged.

One of the other important parts about a dirt bike is you should know that this is a single-cylinder machine, the motor is physically very small though it is pretty powerful.

On some motorcycles, it’s kept small so the weight is kept down, when you’re wrestling a bike around off-road and you have to pick it up after you’ve dropped it after a crash, which is fairly common, in off-road riding having a lighter weight bike really can help.

There are no headlights, no key, no tail light, there’s a bunch of stuff missing on this bike that won’t make it legal to ride around on the street. When it comes to riding these things again riding off-road is really different than riding on the street.

These types of bikes are tall, I’m six foot three and I’m standing up I’m on my tiptoes on this bike. The suspension travel works great, but just keep in mind that you probably want to go to the tall end of the spectrum if you’re just learning how to ride.

Dirt Bikes

From a rider standpoint talking about the ergonomics, it’s very similar to what we talked about with a standard riding position. My hands are out in front of me, it’s definitely a wider handlebar for maximum leverage but you will see from the image that your shoulders are on top of your hips.

You would be sitting upright and your feet would be just below your hips making it very comfortable.

One thing to note with the dirt bike is it has a long flat seat and it is quite uncomfortable, but that’s okay because you will spend most your time standing up or kind of sliding back and forth.

You’re not going to sit in one position too long because you’re going to use your body as a counterweight over terrain.

It’s also one of the reasons why you might see different style handlebars on different style dirt bikes because you want to make sure you’re comfortable not just sitting down but also when you’re standing up.

The Honda CRF 450 in the image is one of the larger machines in the dirt realm, and while this bike itself might not be the most appropriate one for you to start off with, the beauty of dirt bikes is they come in a plethora of different sizes.

You can start off with something as small as a CRF 50 or you can work your way up throughout the range across pretty much every manufacturer out there so there’s a dirt bike for you and like I said as long as you get somewhere to ride it they’re an excellent machine to start riding on.

Dirt bikes are really a lot of fun this is one of my favorite classes to ride in.

Adventure Bike (ADV)

The next bike is my weapon of choice and that’s an adventure bike also known as an adv bike.

These bikes differ from a dirt bike in several important ways, they’re larger, they’re heavier, they have bigger more powerful multi-cylinder engines and they’re also street-legal so these bikes are the Cadillac of dirt bikes.

They’re kind of enormous but they’re also much more powerful.

You can either look at the adventure bike as just a giant dirt bike or you could look at them as touring bikes with some off-road pretense to it. The adventure bikes aren’t as tall as dirt bikes but keep in mind it’s still pretty damn tall.

At six-foot-three and I’m almost flat-footed on this FA100 but for the shorter riders out there, just keep in mind these might be intimidating as a first machine.

From a rider standpoint when we’re talking about economics the adventure bike is very similar to the dirt bike. It has a wide flat handlebar, your hands will be in front of you, your shoulders on top of your hips and then when you put your foot up on the peg it will sit directly below you.

Adventure Bike

That’s because of a lot of adventure riders out there and if you are going to use this off-road you’re going to spend a lot of time standing up, the same way we talked about with a dirt bike.

Unlike a dirt bike, this seat is much more comfortable because most of the OEMs realized that the majority of riders looking at this style of bike are probably using it for traveling a large number of miles on pavement and therefore you need a more comfortable seat.

One thing to note with this is they are a larger bike, they’re a little bit pricier and most of you out there are probably not going to want to consider the larger sect of ATV machines as your first bike.

However, I have a favorite section in a zone that might be more appropriate for riders out there looking to tackle both on-road and off road and that’s the dual-sport.

Dual Sport Bike

A dual-sport sits squarely between the dirt bike and the adventure bike, think of it as a dirt bike with blinkers. It doesn’t have nearly the amenities or road capabilities of an adventure bike but what it does allow a rider to do is to take a dirt bike onto the street.

This is great for riders who plan on either riding to the trail or riders who want to connect a series of trails with short pieces of pavement in between.

Their Road legal, they have emissions equipment, they also have all of the lighting and inspection items you might need in order to get a sticker onto your bike but you still have most of the capability of a dirt bike.

So What Type Of Motorcycle Should You Get As A Beginner?

Well, that’s actually a really hard question to answer. It’s kinda’ like asking somebody else to tell you what kind of underwear you should wear. There’s a lot of strong opinions on the matter, and just because all your buddies wear tighty-whities doesn’t mean that they’re right for you.

At the end of the day, it’s your butt. But there are some things you may want to consider. First being, what kind of experience are you looking to have?

Thinking about the kind of riding you want to do will help you find a bike that is capable of that. But more important than any of that is just; which bike do you think is the coolest?

Seriously. All your buddies are riding cruisers, but you think the Suzuki V-Strom is coolest thing you’ve seen since Han Solo showed up in the Millennium Falcon: Go with that, she is a helluva ship.

But if you are still unsure, just like everybody loves Firefly, a standard is a great place to start. Being at the center of things, if you find yourself leaning one way or the other, the standard can accommodate you and help you find the kind of riding that you enjoy the most.

[atr-programming]

Somatotypes

I was involved in a discussion on Reddit a couple of days ago regarding my reference to Somatotypes in my post titled “The Big Guy… How to Train?”. I was told that the theory had been debunked as junk science years ago and had no relevance to training or diet. This is a long one folks, but bear with me as it turns out this is a topic with some passion behind it.

At ATR, we definitely consider the body type when it comes to training. When the body type gets discussed, it’s easy to throw around the somatotypes and label athletes as being either mesomorphic, ectomorphic, or endomorphic.

There is a large amount of discussion regarding whether or not they have any place in the fitness world. Some say that there are hard and fast relationships between different somatotypes and the way they should be exercising and dieting. Others say that it is junk science that needs to be discarded in its entirety.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Psychological History

Back in the 1940s a guy by the name of William Herbert Sheldon thought that just by looking at a person, he could determine how smart, nice, and aggressive a person was. He said there were three human physiques, while one person might have influences from all three, these body types formed an all-inclusive taxonomy.

1.       Endomorphy was referenced to describe the fatness or the roundness of a person’s physique.

2.       Mesomorphy was referenced to describe how muscular a body was.

3.       Ectomorphy was referenced to describe how lean and slender the person was.

In Mr. Sheldon’s research, he actually believed that these body types were directly linked to three specific personality types. Those were:

1.       Viscerotonia, or a social, complacent, and food loving individual.

2.       Somatotonia, or a physical, aggressive, and tough individual.

3.       Cerebrotonia, or a sensitive, introverted, and intellectual individual.

He basically tried to prove the stereotypes about the jolly fat man, the meat-headed brute, and the lean wise-man. Now I’m sure that we all know that you don’t have to be fat to be social, muscular to be tough, or slender to have an intellect. His own research was considered to be illegitimate, and the idea that body types and psychological temperaments were somehow linked was thrown out.

From Psychology to Athletics

While the physical structure of a person doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about their mind, it can certainly tell you about other parts of their body and how they interact with the world. This led to the development of the Heath-Carter formula and its use in anthropological studies by researchers. The Heath-Carter formula actually took measurements of a person’s body and plugged it into various equations that allowed a researcher to actually assess a person’s endomorphy, mesomorphy, or ectomorphy all on a 7-point scale.

Eventually, professionals in the field of physical education got ahold of the formula and started using it their studies. Most of the studies that were popularized were used to show that athletes built in certain ways were going to be more successful at certain sports. For example, a study performed to see what commonalities were there in the body types of successful tennis players or rowers.

Where It Is Today

What this has turned into in our fitness world is a dispute that is filled with emotion and potentially misunderstanding. While the original theories of Sheldon were debunked, and ridiculous, the images of the endomorph, the mesomorph, and the ectomorph are still in our heads today. Everyone in the industry knows what they are, but there is a wide spectrum of opinion on whether or not anything can be applied from the original taxonomy.

The question is: Which side is correct? Does it belong, or is it all a hoax?

Today if you go to look for research that will definitively tell you the answer to that question, you will find that none exists. There is a lot of research still being done today that analyzes the individual somatotype of elite athletes, likely to be used to seek out potential recruits who bear the physical qualities necessary to be successful at their given sport.

It is difficult to find any information that directly pertains to somatotypes and nutrition, or somatotypes and fitness. Seems strange, especially considering the way that it is either touted as gospel or considered damnable witchcraft by the fitness community.

The Assumptions - Diet

First let’s discuss nutrition. The basic stereotypes surrounding nutrition for the three somatotypes are as follows:

1.       Endomorph – The endomorph has a low carbohydrate tolerance, and as such should be eating more fat, and less carbohydrates in their diet.

2.       Mesomorph – Mesomorphs typically have a reasonable tolerance for both carbohydrates and fats, and should consume a fairly level mix, perhaps slightly weighted towards carbohydrates.

3.       Ectomorph – The ectomorph has a high carbohydrate tolerance, and as such should be eating more carbohydrates and less fats.

The old rule of thumb regarding protein is 1-1.5 grams of protein per pound of your goal weight. While this exact figure is often debated amongst professionals, this figure is one that has been utilized in the bodybuilding and elite athletics domains and is the one that ATR has seen the most success with.

There is a debate regarding the amount of carbohydrates and fats that a person should have in their diet. Some would say that a calorie is a calorie, and that as long as you are maintaining a deficit you will lose weight. Others would say that limiting one of either fats or carbohydrates will help you to shed pounds. While both of these are likely correct in their own way, at ATR we are trying to optimize the results of our athletes, not just see weight loss.

If we look to the Bodybuilding world, preserving muscle and losing fat is the ultimate goal for a large portion of the year. These athletes utilize carbohydrate manipulation to drive their weight loss. Frank Zane would bob in and out of a ketogenic state to cut down his weight. In Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, he describes that an athlete should eat as little carbohydrates as possible without going into a ketogenic state. Literally eating as little carbohydrates as possible without becoming carbohydrate deprived. To cut weight down, they cut carbohydrates down.

According to the most recent data from the US Dept. of Agriculture, the average carbohydrate intake for grown men is ~46-53%, and the average carbohydrate intake for grown women is ~49-53%. The average daily caloric intake is ~2400-2700 for men and ~1850-2000 for grown women. If the average American diet is half full of carbs, when I see a classic endomorph, I think that he’s not efficiently handling that carb-load. When I see a classic ectomorph, I think that he’s handling that carb-load very efficiently. These are generalizations that should not be used in a vacuum to prescribe an exact diet, but they do help to point the athlete in a new direction.

Keep in mind that the evaluation of athletes utilizing somatotypes as a tool is an exercise in futility when that athlete is at an extreme end of the spectrum. When you have someone that is excessively overweight, cutting back on food in general is likely the best advice to be given regardless of whether it’s carbohydrates, protein, or fats. It the athlete looks to be skin covered bones that spent the last 30 days in a desert, any food is likely to improve their overall situation.

The somatotypes give us a general idea of what is going on, not a diagnosis. They should be used as a tool to give preliminary understanding, and to guide follow up questions into a person’s health. To throw them out completely is to ignore common sense and

The Assumption - Training

When evaluating the somatotypes with the Heath-Carter formula, the width of the elbow and knee joints are compared to the girth of the arm and calf. In addition, the mass of the athlete is compared to the height of the athlete. There is no actual analysis of limb lengths, or their relationship to other parts of the body. Despite this, when we think of Endomorphs, we think of wide hips and wide shoulders relative to the height. This is likely because for the height to mass relationship to indicate endomorphy, the person simply has to be wider and shorter than a person to which the relationship would indicate ectomorphy.

As such, when we think endomorph, we think short, stocky, like carrying fat over the top of larger muscle bellies. With these wider bone and joint structures, they have a larger capacity to carry weight in general, both fat and muscle. Larger joints displace more weight, offering them more capacity to handle a load. When you look at a traditional powerlifting physique or a large lineman in football, often times it is very similar to that of the endomorph. Their limbs that form the lever when moving weights are shorter relative to the joints that form the fulcrum. Endomorphs have a leverage advantage when performing many exercises.

When we think ectomorph, we think long, lean, slender, and very little mass at all. The smaller bone structures of these people do not have the capacity to carry as much mass, neither muscle nor fat. With smaller joints, they do not displace weight as well, and as such tend to have less capacity to lift large weights. With long limbs and small joints, where the endomorph would see a leverage advantage, the ectomorph tends to be at a large disadvantage. However, with less mass to deal with, their physiology is not strained as hard when performing aerobic activity as the endomorph’s.

When it comes to athletics, the mesomorph is the golden boy of sorts. Their musculature is built on a bone structure somewhere in between the perfect stereotypical endomorph and the perfect stereotypical ectomorph. These physiques tend to be what you see amongst successful bodybuilders, a lot of wrestlers, and linebackers or full-backs in football.

Can We Use It?

Now back to the debate at hand: should this taxonomy have anything to do with the programming of an athlete?

At ATR, we believe it should to some degree. With leverage being a tool that the classic endomorph has at his disposal, manipulating heavier weights will be less of a problem than that of the classic ectomorph. Hitting a squat with short femurs, short tibias, wide hips, and wide knees, is much more mechanically advantageous than hitting a squat with a lack of those traits. The classic ectomorph is forced to move a load that is heavier relative to his or her lever and typically move that load farther because the lever is longer. If we define work as being force times displacement, the ectomorph is doing more work than the endomorph at the same weight.

Combine that line of thinking with the goals of the average endomorph and the average ectomorph. The endomorph typically wants to lose weight, while the ectomorph usually wants to gain. If the endomorph wants to lose weight, then he must increase his relative workload. The quickest way to do so would be to incorporate more of those levers at the same time using compound exercises. These exercises need to be performed to take advantage of their bone structure’s capacity for muscle, while increasing the density of the work through the simultaneous increase of repetitions and decrease of rest times. The ectomorph however would want to preserve any energy that they have to ensure that it goes towards growth instead of output. They need to perform larger movements similar to the endomorph, however they need to perform their sets with ample rest time and less reps.

The mesomorph has the ability to gain muscle easily while maintaining less fat. The Heath-Carter formula literally defines a mesomorph by analyzing the amount of muscle the individual carries relative to the results of their skin fold measurements. This is the athlete that may want to spend some time on isolated movements in an attempt to round out the overall physique. The endomorphs and ectomorphs that have found a caloric balance at a body mass makeup they are happy with can and should also begin the sculpting process, using isolation movements to bring out what they might deem to be lagging body parts.

Regardless of whether or not you believe that a person can be classified as one of the three somatotypes or not, ignoring the attributes of individuals when programming will limit their potential progress. They may see gains, but they will come more slowly than they could be if you optimized their program based on their unique physical characteristics. Even if you don’t believe someone can be an endomorph, if you try to train an overweight individual with a long drawn out series of isolation movements, they will not see the same progress as the overweight individual who trains in a manner conducive to a classic stereotypical endomorph. The same statement applies for the ectomorph.

Productive Application

In the actual instruction manual produced written by Dr. Lindsay Carter for the application of the Heath-Carter formula, the image used to display the somatotype profile was on a coordinate grid of sorts. There were three points that each individually represented a degree of their respective somatotype. Incorporating the three directions, there were countless possibilities of physiques within the triangle that represented all variants. The point is that there are any number of combinations of the three somatotypes in any given individual. Think of the individual who has a lean and slender figure from the waist up, but carries a lot of fat on thick joints from the waist down. There’s also a classic physique known to all best described as a large belly on pair of stilts.

To find a physique that falls perfectly into any of the three somatotypes is rare, and may even be non-existent, however you can use the principles to guide your programming. Look to the athlete’s body to ask follow-up questions about their diet. Use their structure to determine what exercises will be best for them. To throw out all of these completely and just say training is training and a calorie is a calorie may lead to some results with beginners, but it will not give the intermediate or the advanced optimal results.

[marco42james]

5 Awesome Things for Teachers to Do This Summer

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From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Summer is an important time for educators. While some people debate what educators should or shouldn’t do over the summer, ultimately it is YOUR summer and YOUR plans. Here are five things to consider as you plan your summer.

Now, there are so many different ways you can spend your summer. If you’re not intentional about it, summer will just be gone in a flash just like everything else.

Advancement Courses has more than 200 graduate level online PD courses for K-12 teachers. Go to advancementcourses.com/coolcat and use the code COOL20 at checkout for 20% off any course.

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#1: Rest Up

First of all, I think one of the most important things that we can do is to rest up. Did you know that lack of sleep can reduce your pain tolerance and causes to perceive events as more stressful than we would otherwise?

Now, there are not a lot of studies on how often teachers sleep because I’ve looked. A 2008 Ball State University study found that 43% of teachers said they slept an average of 6 hours or less per night. About a fourth said their teaching skills were significantly diminished due to lack of sleep.

You may not know this, but scientists say sleep deprivation will kill you faster than food deprivation. If we sleep badly, we often crave a high-carbohydrate diet which can make us overweight.

Most of us teachers start the summer with what researchers call a “sleep debt”. A sleep debt is the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount you actually get.

Generally, experts recommend around eight hours of sleep per night, but you can’t just have a marathon and sleep for three or four straight days, although that does sound nice, it’s just not possible for most of us.

So if you’re chronically sleep-deprived, what experts say is that you just need an extra hour or two a night.

In a quote from Scientific American from their article, “Can you catch up on lost sleep?”

“Go to bed when you are tired, and allow your body to wake you in the morning (no alarm clock allowed). You may find yourself catatonic in the beginning of the recovery cycle: Expect to bank upward of ten hours shut-eye per night. As the days pass, however, the amount of time sleeping will gradually decrease.”

Now I know some of you will want to stay up late, but listen to your body clock and determine your individual sleeping pattern.

For example, every morning at 5:30, I am going to be awake. There’s just nothing I can do about it, but I have found that I can catch a quick nap sometimes at 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon, so I try to do that as much as possible and not have guilt, even though that’s very hard for a farmer’s daughter like me who really had the importance of work ethics stressed.

This is your only time, teachers, to get caught up, and you really need to do that so that you’ll feel less stressed in the fall.

#2 Disconnect

Secondly, we need to disconnect and hang it up. You know, a Louisiana second-grader’s homework recently went viral. The girl said,

“I don’t like the phone because my parents are on the phone every day. I hate my mom’s phone and wish she never had one.”

Social media addiction can also be associated with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and ADHD.

Our summertime is an excellent time to break that social media addiction if you think you might have one.

Give Yourself a Digital Detox

Honestly, I think all of us can do with a digital detox for a week or two. Now, I know that sounds like a long time to be off Facebook, but you can start in small ways.

First of all, refuse to let phones sit down with you at the table. Enjoy your food in the company of the people there.

When my pastor goes on vacation, he has a smartphone basket, and when everybody enters the door to go on vacation, they put their phones into the basket, and then when they leave from vacation, they pick them up. I think that is a fantastic way to do it.

The Awesome (and Often Ignored Feature) of EVERY Smartphone

I also want to introduce you to a fancy awesome feature of your smartphone – yes, you have an off button. Take that button, push it, turn it off, and leave it off for a period of time.

Honestly, that peace of mind that you get from a period of time of disconnection is awesome.

Truthfully, when we go on vacation and I totally go offline, it takes me 2 or 3 days to stop wondering what’s happening on Facebook, stop wondering what’s happening on Twitter, and truthfully just focus on the people right in front of me, but I feel so good and recentered and remembering what is important when I have that digital detox or just go off the grid and get offline.

I think all of us really, really need to do it, even when we’re just at home, take the phone away from yourself. Sometimes, if I can’t trust myself to take the phone away from myself, I will get my husband Kip to take the phone away from me, and I’ll say, “Here, Kip, take it, don’t give it back to me for a period of time.”

#3 Laugh It Up

Now, the next thing, #3, is to laugh it up.

Laughter decreases stress hormones, increases oxygen in your blood, strengthens your immune system, releases endorphins, and so much more.

How can we laugh more?

Make funny friends. First of all, make a decision that you are going to spend more time laughing. One way is to have crazy friends who make you laugh. I love awesome people who make me laugh.

When I go to a conference, I like to hang with people like Jerry Blumengarten – I mean, the guy wears a cape.

One summer, I went with my son and husband and then Kevin Honeycutt and Angela Maiers– two of the funniest people I know – to the Blue Man Group concert in Orlando. It was just something we planned and said,

“Hey, you know, we’re all going to be in the same place at the same time, let’s do it.”

I still laugh thinking about that night.

Play with your pets. Now, if you don’t have a funny friend, we all have funny little friends – we have children, we have dogs, we have pets. Honestly, I love my cats, but my cats are not funny unless they’re a kitten, and then they’re just kind of annoying.

So dogs are funny, there are just so many things that are funny. Do find funny beings to hang out with.

Honestly, decide to be the kind of person who sees things as funny and laughs at yourself.

I think that’s the easiest way to laugh more.

Go with old standbys. If I’m really looking for a laugh, I’ll just look up old Tim Conway shticks on YouTube, and I am going to laugh hilariously – especially there is one where he is on a budget airline, and it cracks me up and I can’t stop laughing. I love seeing that one, or when Tim Conway numbs his leg at the dentist. Those are two instant laughs, or, you know, just Young Frankenstein or something like that – although, honestly, I find more fun in laughing at people that I know than I do people on TV shows.

#4 Schedule Checkups

So #4 is not so much fun as the last one: it is having a checkup.

Now those of us who have been putting off our eye exams or all that preventative healthcare now is the time to do it.

I have read that only half of checkups have preventative healthcare. If you just get a regular old checkup, it doesn’t really do much good.

It’s when you do the preventative healthcare that it really makes a difference. So do go ahead, and if you’re behind on that, get that off your mind, because here’s the thing that happens: if we’re overdue for our checkup, we will remind ourselves a thousand times during the next school year, and every time we do, we feel guilty and it’s a downer. Don’t do that.

Go ahead and get the checkup and be done with it. Then schedule a reward for yourself afterward, like a night at the movies, or do something with a friend.

#5 Level Up

The fifth one is, after you’ve rested up, after you’ve laughed it up, and checked it up, and you’ve hung it up and had your digital detox, do take a little time to level it up.

Now, I choose to stay out of the drama, there was a drama dust-up recently on Twitter where people were talking about what’s a good teacher and what they should be doing in the summer.

Honestly, I’ve got enough drama in my real life than to worry about drama in online life. I mean, be kind, be respectful, I think teachers are just tired and some are just fussy and they choose to fuss about things that are truly not that important and really lower the nobility of our profession.

I just prefer to try to level up and say, “Okay, how can I improve my thinking?” Now, I always keep something I call the Big Three: what are the three things that I want to improve next?

Performance art and room design, these are two big things that I’m looking at.

So right now, I’ve tweeted it out, I’ve asked on Facebook, and I’ll ask be asking in my newsletter:

If you have an awesome computer lab you’d like to show off, would you please tweet me a picture, especially if you have a Mac lab or if you have digital film with a Chroma key, I’ve tried to decide, you know, “Should I have a Chromakey curtain? Should I have a Chromakey stand? What should I ask for as we plan the next several years in the new computer lab where I’m going to be working at my new school?”

I also am fascinated by some of the ideas we’ve had this year: the episodes with Wade and Hope King about their performance art.

Anyway, so that’s one thing I’m looking at, but remember this:

Innovate like a turtle. You want to have slow, steady progress forward.

I’ve still got to do work on 3D printing, honestly, I struggle with that 3D printer although it’s awesome.

I’ve got to study up on that some. I need to level up again in my digital filmmaking – in particular, how I teach three-point lighting, I want to improve that and how I teach the capture of sound.

That’s another thing that I need to improve and level up on this summer.

So what are your Big Three? List those and kind of take some time to investigate and do that.

I also want to learn more about how to help others improve and use technology in their own classroom — especially really, really busy, stressed-out teachers, because I think that’s pretty much all of us.

I’ve given you five ways to take yourself up

So I’ve given you five ways to take yourself up so that you’ll be up when you start school in the fall. Remember, this time will just zip by if you’re not intentional.

Think about what you want to do.

Do read some of those books you love.

Do get some of those things done.

Do get that closet cleaned out and some of those things that you want to do.

But remember: you’ve got to be a human being sometimes and not just a human doing.

We teachers, we work so hard – it’s so easy to just be human doings and not human beings. So I hope you have some time this summer, remarkable educators, to be a human being and so you can be a more remarkable you this fall.

You are awesome, thank you so much for listening, and I appreciate all of you remarkable educators out there who give me lots of encouragement when I wonder, “What on earth am I doing, teaching all day and going home and recording a podcast at night?”

Thanks for your encouragement. Get out there and be remarkable, and will you have a remarkable summer? I hope you do!

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The post 5 Awesome Things for Teachers to Do This Summer appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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[smartoptionsio]

Signals Thursday #10 – Interview with BITCOIN COMPASS

Somewhere on the world might still be Thursday, so we still publish our Signals Thursday… And end this season for now with a very special interview guest. Bitcoin Compass is one of our listed Discord Signal Groups. They came and they ruled – pretty fast, and far more important: they have proven many times that they are true experts in trading and have a deep knowledge when it comes to crypto projects. Recently, they contributed an article, “The Ripple Mafia“, which went viral.

SMARTOPTIONS.IO: Bitcoin Compass sky-rocketed out of the nowhere and became almost instantly a very popular Telegram channel, providing a great flow of news and information. Tell us about a bit about your team and how y’all have been able to achieve this success that fast.

BITCOIN COMPASS: Hi! We too are really pleased that the channel is gaining traction so quickly. The key to this is the team. Without a doubt. We have people from a range of diverse backgrounds: from finance to marketing, from start-ups to corporates. Research and commitment to quality is at the heart of what we do, and that’s why we are absolutely thrilled to have some of the best traders and analysts in the world. Not only this, but the team’s desire for continuous improvement is genuinely aspiring. And results show for it.

SMARTOPTIONS.IO: When we discussed a guest post on our site, we decided for the Ripple Mafia (link), though you also offered a pretty decent and spot-on logarithmic Bitcoin analysis. I know it’s way too late now, but please leave some words about that.

BITCOIN COMPASS: It’s never too late. The current bear market is far from its end, despite the recent drop that we saw with the price of Bitcoin over the last few months.

Think about it like this. The current price is similar to what we saw in August-September last year. How many experienced investors, do you think, bought Bitcoin during this time? Not many. Believe me, there will be more people abandoning the ship at the next sight of a storm, convinced that the ship is sinking. But sinking, it is not.

The Capitulation phase that is yet to come will provide plenty of opportunities to acquire assets at many low prices.

Have a look at this logarithmic monthly candle chart for Bitcoin.

See how that after breaking from the red channel, there was a strong movement to the downside? We can, of course, test this level once more before reaching the full capitulation. Eventually, however, we’ll test the blue channel and if it also breaks, there is a high chance of reaching $1,000 for a single bitcoin.

After reaching the bottom, our target for 2021 is $100,000 per bitcoin. This is 100-fold more than the price of $1,000. And that’s just in the span of 30 months. This increase is likely to be fueled by both, the rapidly growing interest from investors (institutional and individual) and the 3rd halving of the Bitcoin mining rewards, expected around mid-2020.

It’s really important to note that the upcoming world financial crisis – and yes, it’s coming – will be the very first one for Bitcoin and it can turn out to be ugly when it comes to price. When will this happen? Possibly, after reaching the target of $100,000, possible prior to that. Stay tuned for our updates!

SMARTOPTIONS.IO: Hard times to trade Altcoins.  Many signal channels switched to leveraged trading, tho you still can achieve quite some impressive results on the Alt-side. How do you prepare your Analysis? Do you consider and anticipate BTC moves before posting an Altcoin signal?

BITCOIN COMPASS: We’re certain that the altcoin market has lifeblood in it. Still, we are also testing a leveraged trading service and an automatic API trading system, simply because this is what our audience wants. The demand is there, otherwise we wouldn’t be looking into this space.

And yes, absolutely. Our altcoin analysis is prepared with the potential BTC movements in mind, as the two are tightly linked. We pick our entries very carefully and always – always – have carefully planned stop-loss strategies in place. It’s no secret that contingency planning is crucial for sustainable success.

SMARTOPTIONS.IO: What’s your personal view on the future of Crypto? How do you expect the market to evolve? Altcoin wipe-out? Multi-year bear phase?

BITCOIN COMPASS: If we were skeptics, it wouldn’t make sense for us to do what we do, would it? Each and every single member of the team is a passionate believer in the potential of blockchain to change the world. We all have different takes on it but unconditionally converge on the fact that crypto is the place to be.

There is a general consensus within the team that 2020 will be a huge year for crypto. Debates are still raging about 2019, though…

Regardless, we are getting ready for a multi-year bear market. Potentially as the parabolic 2017, it will need some time to cool down and this is natural. People need to understand that this is a normal market behavior in the cryptocurrency space. And this induces further confidence in the prospects on a speedy recovery.

This will undoubtedly lead to some altcoins being wiped out – but yet again, this is only normal. This happens in all areas of business, and it’s unreasonable to expect crypto act otherwise. The coins that will survive, however, will enjoy immense growth in the long run.

We are on the constant look-out for such projects. They are coins, whose underlying business ideas are likely to make the most meaningful impact. So keep your eyes peeled.

SMARTOPTIONS.IO: How do you make use of this retracement? Which alts do you accumulate and keep as your gems? Do you plan your entries here, or do you do the classic DCA with buying amount x every x days?

BITCOIN COMPASS: During the past retracement, our priority was to keep our capital and the capital of our followers in intact. Ultimately, that’s why we’re posting regular updates on our group, so that people can make more informed decisions. One of the recent ‘gems’ that we shared firstly with premium subscribers and later with free members too was the SRN token/Sirin Labs. We used dollar cost averaging techniques to minimize risks and maximize long-term potential.

We did so by placing buy orders at different price levels, from 1,360 down to 1,150 sats, averaging our way down. This coin then hit 5,678 sats a few weeks after our signal, which meant up to 500% ROI. We believe that averaging down entries is an effective approach and should be used whenever possible.

Bitcoin Technical Analysis by Bitcoin Compass

SMARTOPTIONS.IO: Thank you so much for your time, guys.

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Fact Sheet for BITCOIN COMPASS

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Website: Bitcoincompass.io (don't let scammers lead you to TheBitcoinCompass.com - it has nothing to do with this legit guys)

Pre Membership channel: https://discord.gg/v5jWD2F

Telegram: This channel offers their signals also on Telegram, it is included in the subscription price.

Discord Contact: @Flow#1964 (you can also contact them on Telegram if you prefer)

Discount Code: 10% off with SMARTOPTIONS10OFF

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Further Information: Interview with Bitcoin Compass | Guest Post "The Ripple Mafia"

Auto Trader: coming soon

Exchanges: Markets on Binance / Bitfinex / (Bitmex)

Results Tracking: Tracking Sheet on Google Docs

Signals with TA: Yes, Tradingview charts are attached

Bitmex Signals: Yes, you can use their Bitcoin Trades on Bitmex with caution (not recommended officially)

ICO Reviews / Seed Sale Opportunities: No

Trading Timezones: GMT +1

Chat Rooms: - #free-community-chat (free), - #ta-lounge (free) - #premium-chat-room (premium)

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[aira26soonas]

5 Awesome Things for Teachers to Do This Summer

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From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Summer is an important time for educators. While some people debate what educators should or shouldn’t do over the summer, ultimately it is YOUR summer and YOUR plans. Here are five things to consider as you plan your summer.

Now, there are so many different ways you can spend your summer. If you’re not intentional about it, summer will just be gone in a flash just like everything else.

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#1: Rest Up

First of all, I think one of the most important things that we can do is to rest up. Did you know that lack of sleep can reduce your pain tolerance and causes to perceive events as more stressful than we would otherwise?

Now, there are not a lot of studies on how often teachers sleep because I’ve looked. A 2008 Ball State University study found that 43% of teachers said they slept an average of 6 hours or less per night. About a fourth said their teaching skills were significantly diminished due to lack of sleep.

You may not know this, but scientists say sleep deprivation will kill you faster than food deprivation. If we sleep badly, we often crave a high-carbohydrate diet which can make us overweight.

Most of us teachers start the summer with what researchers call a “sleep debt”. A sleep debt is the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount you actually get.

Generally, experts recommend around eight hours of sleep per night, but you can’t just have a marathon and sleep for three or four straight days, although that does sound nice, it’s just not possible for most of us.

So if you’re chronically sleep-deprived, what experts say is that you just need an extra hour or two a night.

In a quote from Scientific American from their article, “Can you catch up on lost sleep?”

“Go to bed when you are tired, and allow your body to wake you in the morning (no alarm clock allowed). You may find yourself catatonic in the beginning of the recovery cycle: Expect to bank upward of ten hours shut-eye per night. As the days pass, however, the amount of time sleeping will gradually decrease.”

Now I know some of you will want to stay up late, but listen to your body clock and determine your individual sleeping pattern.

For example, every morning at 5:30, I am going to be awake. There’s just nothing I can do about it, but I have found that I can catch a quick nap sometimes at 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon, so I try to do that as much as possible and not have guilt, even though that’s very hard for a farmer’s daughter like me who really had the importance of work ethics stressed.

This is your only time, teachers, to get caught up, and you really need to do that so that you’ll feel less stressed in the fall.

#2 Disconnect

Secondly, we need to disconnect and hang it up. You know, a Louisiana second-grader’s homework recently went viral. The girl said,

“I don’t like the phone because my parents are on the phone every day. I hate my mom’s phone and wish she never had one.”

Social media addiction can also be associated with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and ADHD.

Our summertime is an excellent time to break that social media addiction if you think you might have one.

Give Yourself a Digital Detox

Honestly, I think all of us can do with a digital detox for a week or two. Now, I know that sounds like a long time to be off Facebook, but you can start in small ways.

First of all, refuse to let phones sit down with you at the table. Enjoy your food in the company of the people there.

When my pastor goes on vacation, he has a smartphone basket, and when everybody enters the door to go on vacation, they put their phones into the basket, and then when they leave from vacation, they pick them up. I think that is a fantastic way to do it.

The Awesome (and Often Ignored Feature) of EVERY Smartphone

I also want to introduce you to a fancy awesome feature of your smartphone – yes, you have an off button. Take that button, push it, turn it off, and leave it off for a period of time.

Honestly, that peace of mind that you get from a period of time of disconnection is awesome.

Truthfully, when we go on vacation and I totally go offline, it takes me 2 or 3 days to stop wondering what’s happening on Facebook, stop wondering what’s happening on Twitter, and truthfully just focus on the people right in front of me, but I feel so good and recentered and remembering what is important when I have that digital detox or just go off the grid and get offline.

I think all of us really, really need to do it, even when we’re just at home, take the phone away from yourself. Sometimes, if I can’t trust myself to take the phone away from myself, I will get my husband Kip to take the phone away from me, and I’ll say, “Here, Kip, take it, don’t give it back to me for a period of time.”

#3 Laugh It Up

Now, the next thing, #3, is to laugh it up.

Laughter decreases stress hormones, increases oxygen in your blood, strengthens your immune system, releases endorphins, and so much more.

How can we laugh more?

Make funny friends. First of all, make a decision that you are going to spend more time laughing. One way is to have crazy friends who make you laugh. I love awesome people who make me laugh.

When I go to a conference, I like to hang with people like Jerry Blumengarten – I mean, the guy wears a cape.

One summer, I went with my son and husband and then Kevin Honeycutt and Angela Maiers– two of the funniest people I know – to the Blue Man Group concert in Orlando. It was just something we planned and said,

“Hey, you know, we’re all going to be in the same place at the same time, let’s do it.”

I still laugh thinking about that night.

Play with your pets. Now, if you don’t have a funny friend, we all have funny little friends – we have children, we have dogs, we have pets. Honestly, I love my cats, but my cats are not funny unless they’re a kitten, and then they’re just kind of annoying.

So dogs are funny, there are just so many things that are funny. Do find funny beings to hang out with.

Honestly, decide to be the kind of person who sees things as funny and laughs at yourself.

I think that’s the easiest way to laugh more.

Go with old standbys. If I’m really looking for a laugh, I’ll just look up old Tim Conway shticks on YouTube, and I am going to laugh hilariously – especially there is one where he is on a budget airline, and it cracks me up and I can’t stop laughing. I love seeing that one, or when Tim Conway numbs his leg at the dentist. Those are two instant laughs, or, you know, just Young Frankenstein or something like that – although, honestly, I find more fun in laughing at people that I know than I do people on TV shows.

#4 Schedule Checkups

So #4 is not so much fun as the last one: it is having a checkup.

Now those of us who have been putting off our eye exams or all that preventative healthcare now is the time to do it.

I have read that only half of checkups have preventative healthcare. If you just get a regular old checkup, it doesn’t really do much good.

It’s when you do the preventative healthcare that it really makes a difference. So do go ahead, and if you’re behind on that, get that off your mind, because here’s the thing that happens: if we’re overdue for our checkup, we will remind ourselves a thousand times during the next school year, and every time we do, we feel guilty and it’s a downer. Don’t do that.

Go ahead and get the checkup and be done with it. Then schedule a reward for yourself afterward, like a night at the movies, or do something with a friend.

#5 Level Up

The fifth one is, after you’ve rested up, after you’ve laughed it up, and checked it up, and you’ve hung it up and had your digital detox, do take a little time to level it up.

Now, I choose to stay out of the drama, there was a drama dust-up recently on Twitter where people were talking about what’s a good teacher and what they should be doing in the summer.

Honestly, I’ve got enough drama in my real life than to worry about drama in online life. I mean, be kind, be respectful, I think teachers are just tired and some are just fussy and they choose to fuss about things that are truly not that important and really lower the nobility of our profession.

I just prefer to try to level up and say, “Okay, how can I improve my thinking?” Now, I always keep something I call the Big Three: what are the three things that I want to improve next?

Performance art and room design, these are two big things that I’m looking at.

So right now, I’ve tweeted it out, I’ve asked on Facebook, and I’ll ask be asking in my newsletter:

If you have an awesome computer lab you’d like to show off, would you please tweet me a picture, especially if you have a Mac lab or if you have digital film with a Chroma key, I’ve tried to decide, you know, “Should I have a Chromakey curtain? Should I have a Chromakey stand? What should I ask for as we plan the next several years in the new computer lab where I’m going to be working at my new school?”

I also am fascinated by some of the ideas we’ve had this year: the episodes with Wade and Hope King about their performance art.

Anyway, so that’s one thing I’m looking at, but remember this:

Innovate like a turtle. You want to have slow, steady progress forward.

I’ve still got to do work on 3D printing, honestly, I struggle with that 3D printer although it’s awesome.

I’ve got to study up on that some. I need to level up again in my digital filmmaking – in particular, how I teach three-point lighting, I want to improve that and how I teach the capture of sound.

That’s another thing that I need to improve and level up on this summer.

So what are your Big Three? List those and kind of take some time to investigate and do that.

I also want to learn more about how to help others improve and use technology in their own classroom — especially really, really busy, stressed-out teachers, because I think that’s pretty much all of us.

I’ve given you five ways to take yourself up

So I’ve given you five ways to take yourself up so that you’ll be up when you start school in the fall. Remember, this time will just zip by if you’re not intentional.

Think about what you want to do.

Do read some of those books you love.

Do get some of those things done.

Do get that closet cleaned out and some of those things that you want to do.

But remember: you’ve got to be a human being sometimes and not just a human doing.

We teachers, we work so hard – it’s so easy to just be human doings and not human beings. So I hope you have some time this summer, remarkable educators, to be a human being and so you can be a more remarkable you this fall.

You are awesome, thank you so much for listening, and I appreciate all of you remarkable educators out there who give me lots of encouragement when I wonder, “What on earth am I doing, teaching all day and going home and recording a podcast at night?”

Thanks for your encouragement. Get out there and be remarkable, and will you have a remarkable summer? I hope you do!

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e330/

[overcomerecords]

A decade after Ike, Houston still hasn’t spent tens of millions it got to build affordable housing

When Tory Gunsolley learned that his agency was about to receive $40 million in federal recovery funds in the wake of Hurricane Ike, he was thrilled.

It was 2011, and the Houston Housing Authority director had recently taken the job after leaving a similar position in Newark. He immediately realized that this new pot of money could be a “once in a generation opportunity” to address Houston’s desperate need for more affordable housing — a chance to build as many as 2,000 new units across Houston for lower-income people.

Seven years later — and a full decade after Ike, the disaster that brought those recovery dollars — Gunsolley chuckles when he thinks back to his original plans. Of the $45 million his agency eventually received from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), it has managed to build just 154 units of affordable housing with $12 million.

The rest of the money has been embroiled in a fierce fight over how to undo the nation’s legacy of racial segregation in housing.

“Our plans,” Gunsolley said, “got caught up in this national shifting of priorities.”

After Hurricane Ike sent as much as 15 feet of water surging into parts of Harris County and affected nearly 250,000 homes, the area received hundreds of millions of dollars from HUD for housing-related projects. That included more than $200 million to repair and build new apartment complexes across the region.

And just as that money started to flow, prominent members of the Obama administration had begun pushing for better enforcement of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 — in particular, the need to undo the racial segregation in housing that the federal government had enabled for decades through redlining and discriminatory lending practices. (The administration passed new rules in 2015 to do just that.)

Gunsolley’s agency ended up in the crosshairs. He had originally planned to build several affordable housing projects in predominantly poor and minority areas, but state and federal agencies blocked nearly all of them after fair housing advocates argued they would only serve to perpetuate segregation.

A map from a 2013 study shows some of the distressed neighborhoods where the Houston Housing Authority hoped to use Ike recovery dollars. Most of the agency’s plans were blocked, except for a 154-unit apartment complex in Independence Heights. City of Houston

Gunsolley then tried twice to build apartments in wealthier areas. But community opposition and politics killed both of those efforts, too; residents said they worried about more traffic, overcrowded schools, decreasing property values and crime if subsidized apartments went up in their neighborhoods.

In a final attempt to use the rest of the money, the housing authority had been quietly working to buy an existing apartment complex in the well-off Briar Forest neighborhood in West Houston, with hopes to turn about 300 of its units into affordable housing. A week before the deal was set to close, Hurricane Harvey hit and destroyed the complex’s first floor.

Gunsolley’s not sure what will happen next. He’s working on more proposals, but as time goes by the pot of money loses value due to inflation and rising construction prices (Fannie Mae estimates that apartment construction costs have increased nearly 20 percent in the past few years). If the housing authority can’t find consensus on where to spend the remaining tens of millions, Gunsolley worries that Congress may end up asking for its money back — the state has already asked for some unspent Ike recovery funds that aren’t related to housing to be allocated elsewhere.

The debates will only intensify once an even bigger pot of recovery money becomes available in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which damaged hundreds of public housing units and likely thousands more affordable apartments across Houston.

Fair housing advocates say federal law has always been clear: Federal dollars must be spent in a way that helps undo racial segregation in housing. They’re already gearing up for a fight over how recovery dollars from Hurricane Harvey will be spent.

"Our resources have been consumed by the city of Houston’s recalcitrant and obstructionist behavior for a long time,” said John Henneberger, director of the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service. “We will insist that the money is spent in compliance with civil rights laws.”

Revitalization plans clash with desegregation aims

It started with Sunnyside.

Long considered to be one of Houston’s most distressed neighborhoods, the historically black community south of downtown seemed like an obvious target to Gunsolley for the Ike recovery funds. Starting in 2012, with the support of then-Houston Mayor Annise Parker, he proposed three separate projects in Sunnyside that would create 1,000 affordable housing units — mostly reserved for families with incomes of less than $40,000 a year.

The neighborhood had suffered from decades of underinvestment, and Gunsolley imagined “a whole master-planned community with multi-family housing and single-family housing and retail. We were talking about a charter school, a medical school, a library.”

But fair housing advocates argued that the plan would just further concentrate public and subsidized housing into one area. And they pointed out that the plan called for building most of the housing before building the other revitalization anchors, such as a grocery store or shops. The federal government agreed and blocked all three projects.

A plan to build 200 new affordable units in Acres Homes, another historically black community in Northwest Houston, met the same fate. So did an additional proposal to replace damaged subsidized housing in southeast Houston with a mixed-income development. Only one 154-unit apartment complex north of downtown was approved, and it finally broke ground last year. Housing advocates were not happy; its surrounding census tract has a poverty rate of 35 percent.

“They wanted to rebuild in exclusively segregated, very distressed communities,” said Maddie Sloan, who focuses on disaster recovery and fair housing issues for the advocacy group Texas Appleseed. “The reason that’s particularly problematic is, those are the only places the Houston Housing Authority has ever built housing.”

The issue of where to build new apartments was just one of a string of controversies over how Ike housing recovery money was spent. Texas Appleseed and other groups had already sued the state over how the money earmarked for repairing single-family homes was being distributed, arguing that more should go to help lower-income Houstonians.

The settlement they reached in 2010 helped millions more dollars flow to poor homeowners, Sloan said. But it included one provision that almost everyone agrees has not been achieved — the one that required the state to use Ike money for “affirmatively furthering fair housing” to undo the historic patterns of segregation in housing nationwide.

The concept, technically a part of federal law since 1968, went unenforced for decades. It would involve helping lower-income families move to wealthier, more integrated neighborhoods that tend to have better schools and are often majority-white (A growing body of research has shown that a person’s ZIP code is a strong indicator of their future health and economic prosperity).

Houston’s failures to advance fair housing with Ike recovery dollars weren’t for complete lack of trying. One program offered 260 low- and moderate-income Houstonians the chance to rebuild their flooded homes somewhere else in the city— “the first program of its kind in the country,” according to Sloan. Only seven of them took that option.

In wealthier neighborhoods, more resistance

By 2015 — four years after the money had first been announced — nearly all of the proposed housing projects had been blocked. Gunsolley knew he needed a different approach.

To comply with federal rules and overcome resistance from the housing advocates, he needed to build affordable housing in a wealthy neighborhood with good schools.

First, the housing authority tried to buy the site of a shuttered train station in a northwest Houston neighborhood called Fairbanks/Northwest Crossing, hoping to build 300 affordable units there. An outcry from neighbors soon followed, with 200 residents showing up to a public meeting to voice their opposition, according to local media reports. They worried about increased crime and traffic and said they preferred commercial development over residential buildings. So Houston’s transit agency, which owned the site, opted to sell it to Harris County to build government offices instead.

Then, the opportunity came up to buy the land right underneath the agency’s offices at 2640 Fountain View Drive, as well as a tract of land next door. The agency could own land in a prime neighborhood — the wealthy Galleria district, surrounded by luxury apartments — and build affordable units on it.

But there was still a hurdle: The Ike recovery dollars wouldn’t pay for the entire $53 million project, so the housing authority applied for a tax credit to fill the gap. Thanks to a little-known state law passed in 2013, the Houston City Council would need to issue a “resolution of no objection” for the tax credit to go through.

When nearby residents got wind of the plans for 2640 Fountain View, they mounted a fierce opposition campaign. In an angry meeting in early 2016, hundreds of people booed Gunsolley and others who spoke in favor of the project. They echoed the concerns of those who opposed similar housing in Fairbanks/Northwest Crossing — fears of increased crime, traffic and overcrowded schools.

They also took aim at the cost of the project, which amounted to around $240,000 per unit. “This is not affordable housing, rather this is unaffordable housing,” Greg Travis, the Houston councilman who represents the Galleria area, wrote in a letter opposing the project.

The project’s supporters countered that the other subsidized housing project built with Ike recovery funds, in a much poorer part of Houston, cost nearly the same amount per unit and didn’t meet any community opposition.

The Republican congressman who represents the area, John Culberson, also came to the meeting and harshly criticized the plan — attacking the very idea that the federal government should advance fair housing by placing low-income housing in predominantly white neighborhoods.

“This has opened my eyes,” he told the audience, amid cheers and applause. “I’ve already drafted amendments to federal law to make sure that in future, American law, when it comes to housing, has to be race-neutral. You cannot look at the racial makeup of a neighborhood when deciding where to build housing.”

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner agreed that the project was too expensive, and he also argued that poor families shouldn’t be forced to move to wealthier neighborhoods in order to succeed. When Turner, who declined to comment for this story, refused to put the project on the city council agenda for a vote, it couldn’t get the tax credit it needed. The project was dead.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner pictured in his City Hall office in September 2017. Pu Ying Huang for The Texas Tribune

In a scathing letter last year, HUD said the city violated the Civil Rights Act when it killed the Fountain View project.

“The Fountain View proposal would have provided housing opportunities for minority residents in a largely white neighborhood,” the agency wrote, adding that “local opposition was at least in part racially motivated and was factually unfounded.” HUD also pointed out that a 281-unit apartment complex had been built next door to Fountain View just two years earlier — without any affordable units or community outcry.

While Turner strongly contested the finding, HUD’s words didn’t carry much of a hammer. The letter was sent just days before Donald Trump was sworn into office, and his choice to lead HUD, Ben Carson, has referred to the idea of using federal money to advance fair housing as an example of “failed socialism” and “social engineering.”

Earlier this month, HUD signed a short agreement with the city that seemed to table the issue, but advocates say they will fight back. The agreement “basically required the city to do virtually nothing different than what it’s been doing historically,” said Henneberger of the Texas Low-Income Housing Information Service. His group has since sued HUD, arguing that the agency shouldn’t give Houston any more hurricane recovery dollars without taking “effective actions to compel Houston to adjust its housing policies and practices to overcome such segregation.”

Gunsolley said he will keep trying to use the remainder of the Ike recovery money to build housing in a wealthier neighborhood with good schools. But his agency has also argued that might be too much of a hurdle.

“It is cost prohibitive and not an effective use of [our] limited resources to develop only in high opportunity areas,” the housing authority wrote in a 2015 legal brief. “Affordable housing would never get built.”

Sloan, of Texas Appleseed, called that argument “horrifying.” She said the city needs to use recovery dollars to both revitalize distressed areas and to advance fair housing. She added that fair housing isn’t just about undoing racial segregation — it can also help make Houston more resilient for the next disaster.

After all, she pointed out, “the Fountain View site didn’t flood during Harvey.” Indeed, the entire Galleria area remained mostly high and dry.

Will Harvey money meet the same fate?

The Houston Housing Authority isn’t the only agency with Ike recovery dollars tied up in fights over affordable housing.

The city’s housing department, a separate agency, decided to build housing in areas that are gentrifying in an attempt to placate both fair housing advocates and potential neighborhood opposition. But the developer for one such project in the city’s predominantly black Fifth Ward wants to build townhomes that will sell for $350,000-$450,000. Tom McCasland, who became director of the housing department after that deal was made, said he’s re-negotiating to make sure affordable housing gets incorporated into the project, and he’s withholding about $7.5 million in Ike recovery funds as leverage.

And once the Harvey money becomes available, McCasland and other directors of government housing programs are sure that the fight over fair housing will only intensify. After Ike, Texas received just over $3 billion in total from HUD; the initial HUD allocation for the state since Harvey is already $5 billion, with much more expected.

“We need to look at affordable housing that’s open to families,” said Daphne Lemelle, Harris County’s community development director. “I try to be optimistic that the community at large can understand the need for this, but obviously, we have people that feel that’s not for their community.”

Lemelle’s department was able to use Ike recovery dollars to build one subsidized apartment complex in the wealthy Houston suburb of Tomball, but only seniors age 62 and older are allowed to live there.

The Retreat at Westlock, an affordable housing complex for seniors built with Ike recovery funds in a wealthy Houston suburb. Loren Elliott for The Texas Trib

It’s not clear how the housing money from Harvey will be spent just yet, and it could be months — or even years — before those questions are answered. But McCasland is hopeful that things will go differently this time around and that the city will get the money to both revitalize impoverished neighborhoods and build affordable housing in better neighborhoods.

“Residents have a right to stay in communities where they’ve grown up, but they also have the right to choose to move to other neighborhoods that maybe have better schools or are closer to their jobs,” he said. “That’s the dual obligation that we have. Harvey is now the opportunity to execute on the promise that for a long time has been denied to some of these neighborhoods and residents.”

Turner echoed those comments in a city press release issued earlier this month. “If there is a silver lining to Harvey’s devastating cloud, it is that the amount of federal funding headed our way will allow us to reimagine the kind of city Houston can be,” he said in the release.

Could the city really build something like a Fountain View project with Harvey recovery dollars and overcome political opposition? Gunsolley wonders if starting the process sooner — and giving neighbors more time to understand and absorb the proposal — would have reduced the opposition.

“But I’m not confident that it would have made a difference,” he said.

Disclosure: Texas Appleseed has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Read related Tribune coverage:

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The 'greatest pandemic in history' was 100 years ago – but many of us still get the basic facts wrong

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Influenza victims crowd into an emergency hospital near Fort Riley, Kansas in 1918. AP Photo/National Museum of Health

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Between 50 and 100 million people are thought to have died, representing as much as 5 percent of the world’s population. Half a billion people were infected.

Especially remarkable was the 1918 flu’s predilection for taking the lives of otherwise healthy young adults, as opposed to children and the elderly, who usually suffer most. Some have called it the greatest pandemic in history.

The 1918 flu pandemic has been a regular subject of speculation over the last century. Historians and scientists have advanced numerous hypotheses regarding its origin, spread and consequences. As a result, many of us harbor misconceptions about it.

By correcting these 10 myths, we can better understand what actually happened and learn how to prevent and mitigate such disasters in the future.

1. The pandemic originated in Spain

No one believes the so-called “Spanish flu” originated in Spain.

The pandemic likely acquired this nickname because of World War I, which was in full swing at the time. The major countries involved in the war were keen to avoid encouraging their enemies, so reports of the extent of the flu were suppressed in Germany, Austria, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. By contrast, neutral Spain had no need to keep the flu under wraps. That created the false impression that Spain was bearing the brunt of the disease.

In fact, the geographic origin of the flu is debated to this day, though hypotheses have suggested East Asia, Europe and even Kansas.

2. The pandemic was the work of a ‘super-virus’

A Chicago Public Health poster outlines flu regulations during the pandemic. origins.osu.edu

The 1918 flu spread rapidly, killing 25 million people in just the first six months. This led some to fear the end of mankind, and has long fueled the supposition that the strain of influenza was particularly lethal.

However, more recent study suggests that the virus itself, though more lethal than other strains, was not fundamentally different from those that caused epidemics in other years.

Much of the high death rate can be attributed to crowding in military camps and urban environments, as well as poor nutrition and sanitation, which suffered during wartime. It’s now thought that many of the deaths were due to the development of bacterial pneumonias in lungs weakened by influenza.

3. The first wave of the pandemic was most lethal

Actually, the initial wave of deaths from the pandemic in the first half of 1918 was relatively low.

It was in the second wave, from October through December of that year, that the highest death rates were observed. A third wave in spring of 1919 was more lethal than the first but less so than the second.

Scientists now believe that the marked increase in deaths in the second wave was caused by conditions that favored the spread of a deadlier strain. People with mild cases stayed home, but those with severe cases were often crowded together in hospitals and camps, increasing transmission of a more lethal form of the virus.

4. The virus killed most people who were infected with it

In fact, the vast majority of the people who contracted the 1918 flu survived. National death rates among the infected generally did not exceed 20 percent.

However, death rates varied among different groups. In the U.S., deaths were particularly high among Native American populations, perhaps due to lower rates of exposure to past strains of influenza. In some cases, entire Native communities were wiped out.

Of course, even a 20 percent death rate vastly exceeds a typical flu, which kills less than one percent of those infected.

5. Therapies of the day had little impact on the disease

No specific anti-viral therapies were available during the 1918 flu. That’s still largely true today, where most medical care for the flu aims to support patients, rather than cure them.

One hypothesis suggests that many flu deaths could actually be attributed to aspirin poisoning. Medical authorities at the time recommended large doses of aspirin of up to 30 grams per day. Today, about four grams would be considered the maximum safe daily dose. Large doses of aspirin can lead to many of the pandemic’s symptoms, including bleeding.

However, death rates seem to have been equally high in some places in the world where aspirin was not so readily available, so the debate continues.

6. The pandemic dominated the day’s news

Public health officials, law enforcement officers and politicians had reasons to underplay the severity of the 1918 flu, which resulted in less coverage in the press. In addition to the fear that full disclosure might embolden enemies during wartime, they wanted to preserve public order and avoid panic.

However, officials did respond. At the height of the pandemic, quarantines were instituted in many cities. Some were forced to restrict essential services, including police and fire.

7. The pandemic changed the course of World War I

It’s unlikely that the flu changed the outcome of World War I, because combatants on both sides of the battlefield were relatively equally affected.

However, there is little doubt that the war profoundly influenced the course of the pandemic. Concentrating millions of troops created ideal circumstances for the development of more aggressive strains of the virus and its spread around the globe.

Patients receive care for the Spanish flu at Walter Reed Military Hospital, in Washington, D.C. origins.osu.edu

8. Widespread immunization ended the pandemic

Immunization against the flu as we know it today was not practiced in 1918, and thus played no role in ending the pandemic.

Exposure to prior strains of the flu may have offered some protection. For example, soldiers who had served in the military for years suffered lower rates of death than new recruits.

In addition, the rapidly mutating virus likely evolved over time into less lethal strains. This is predicted by models of natural selection. Because highly lethal strains kill their host rapidly, they cannot spread as easily as less lethal strains.

9. The genes of the virus have never been sequenced

In 2005, researchers announced that they had successfully determined the gene sequence of the 1918 influenza virus. The virus was recovered from the body of a flu victim buried in the permafrost of Alaska, as well as from samples of American soldiers who fell ill at the time.

Two years later, monkeys infected with the virus were found to exhibit the symptoms observed during the pandemic. Studies suggest that the monkeys died when their immune systems overreacted to the virus, a so-called “cytokine storm.” Scientists now believe that a similar immune system overreaction contributed to high death rates among otherwise healthy young adults in 1918.

10. The 1918 pandemic offers few lessons for 2018

Severe influenza epidemics tend to occur every few decades. Experts believe that the next one is a question not of “if” but “when.”

While few living people can recall the great flu pandemic of 1918, we can continue to learn its lessons, which range from the commonsense value of handwashing and immunizations to the potential of anti-viral drugs. Today we know more about how to isolate and handle large numbers of ill and dying patients, and we can prescribe antibiotics, not available in 1918, to combat secondary bacterial infections. Perhaps the best hope lies in improving nutrition, sanitation and standards of living, which render patients better able to resist the infection.

For the foreseeable future, flu epidemics will remain an annual feature of the rhythm of human life. As a society, we can only hope that we have learned the great pandemic’s lessons sufficiently well to quell another such worldwide catastrophe.

Richard Gunderman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.