#its almost a completely opinion based essay and i understand that we only have 15 weeks to do ALL OF BRITISH LITERATURE

[amurder-ofcrows]

guess who's getting to write his british literature midterm on why mary wollstonecraft's "a vindication of the rights of women" should be on the syllabus???

[sz-amare]

7. My Top 15 Anime List

I have watched a lot of anime in the past four years, but one thing that gives me great enjoyment is ranking my top anime. Here I will rank my top 15 favorite anime, along with some honorable mentions that couldn’t make it. However, I won’t be going too in-depth on the analyses; I just want to give you a general idea of why the particular anime is where it is on my list. In general, I rank my anime depending on a combination of factors: 1) how brilliant I find the anime to be written, 2) if the themes resonate with me, 3) if it is categorized in my favorite genres, and 4) my general enjoyment level. Anyway, to the list.

 Number 15

One Punch Man

When I first watched One Punch Man, it seemed nothing more than a mindless comedy anime. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed it and laughed a lot, but I found it to be forgettable. But one day, I heard that the genre of One Punch Man was seinen, which made no sense to me. It had no dark and mature themes, and as I mentioned, it was nothing more than a senseless comedy. But then one day, on a whim, I watched One Punch Man again. And I REALLY enjoyed it. I still laughed a lot, but something felt different to me this time. I actually felt like I had a deep connection with each of the characters. The story seemed to be more structured and enjoyable this time, and finally, I could actually see the themes that One Punch Man was trying to explore. It made sudden sense to me that One Punch Man is indeed a seinen and that it had a lot more to it than on the surface. Of course, the difference in experience is because of my new understanding of anime and the experience I gained.

Number 14

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is probably one of the most unknown, underappreciated, and underrated anime on this list. Someone recommended it to me, and I had never heard of it, so I assumed it was a mediocre anime. But when I watched it, I had so much fun which I hadn’t felt in many months. It is a training shōnen anime where the main character tries to learn martial arts. That is all I want to say for now because I don’t want to spoil anything, so go watch it. I highly recommend it.

Number 13

A Place Further than the Universe

I don’t see many people talking much about A Place Further than the Universe. But, I must say, it is absolutely phenomenal. It is, hands down, the most inspiring anime in existence. The basic premise is a high school girl wanting to do something significant in her high school life. I won’t say anymore because, again, I don’t want to spoil this anime, and I recommend you check it out if you need inspiration in your life. Let me just say that it is now an aspiring goal of mine to visit Antarctica.

Number 12

Plastic Memories

I made a whole analysis on the previous post so go check it out. But for a quick recap, the life lesson I learned from Plastic Memories has permanently changed my behavior for the better. I found it to be the saddest anime I have ever watched.

 Number 11

Steins; Gate

Once again, I have already made an analysis on Steins; Gate, but this time I only covered the first episode. I also ranked Steins; Gate a 10/10 so that must mean that the rest of this list must contain masterpieces. But to be honest, that is not really the case. You see, to me, even if I consider something a masterpiece, the enjoyment factor plays the most significant role in ranking high on my list. For example, I found Death Note to be brilliant, but I really struggled to enjoy it and therefore, it is not ranked that highly. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Steins; Gate, but I just enjoyed the rest of these anime way more. Anyway, if you want to see why I loved Steins; Gate so much and why I find it so brilliant, check out blog post 4.

Number 10

Berserk (Manga)

Almost everything I found In Berserk is brilliant (except its adaptations, that’s gas station toilet). Guts is a 10/10 protagonist, Griffith is a 10/10 antagonist, the cast is a 10/10, the story is a 10/10, AND THE ART!!! Holy shit!!! I can actually picture an entire museum dedicated to each panel of Berserk.

 Again, the only reason this anime is not any higher is simply because I enjoyed the others on this list so much more. However, I am yet to review any analyses on it so there is a possibility that it will bump-up several places higher when I truly understand the brilliance behind it. Great read though!

Number 9

Haikyuu

I LOVE Haikyuu. Each season gets progressively better and better. It has a lot of controversy around it because of its fan base and because it’s a sports anime. But to be honest, I find Haikyuu to be a better shōnen than My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, and most other modern shōnen anime. It has its amazing moments, its cast is amazing, the character development is amazing, the themes are amazing, and the antagonists are amazing. I am not bluffing when I say that the antagonists in a Volleyball anime are better than the antagonists in many shōnen anime (I’m going to develop haters before I can even develop fans). I plan on making an essay on what most shōnen strive for yet fail to achieve, and Haikyuu somehow delivers.

Number 8

Oregairu

Best romance. Hands down. Oregairu, or SNAFU, or My Teen Rom-Com is Not What I Expected (yes, so many titles) is a masterpiece in its own right. If you are a guy and you watched Oregairu, don’t act like you didn’t imitate Hachiman a couple times. He is a beautiful protagonist, which most of us guys relate to. His inner monologues result in us treating them as gospel. The sub-text is confusing as fuck, but end up making sense in all sorts of ways once decoded. Yukino is best girl, but man I love Yuigahama almost just as much. The general enjoyment I got out of Oregairu is so far through the roof that I once forced myself to stop watching it so that I could savor the show a little more. It is a little difficult to get into at first, but you will most likely end up enjoying it.

Number 7

Re Zero

This is the most recent addition to the list. I often don’t add anything new to my list; I just switch the places between some of them. But ever since season 2, Re Zero jumped significantly in rank. It is the best anime of 2020 (including sequels), and I enjoyed each episode to the max. I was considering adding Re Zero to my top 10 since the first half of the second season finished, but I was a bit hesitant because I am easily affected by recency bias. But my love for Re Zero would just not die down: my love for it grows after each episode airs. It is the only anime on this list that I watched weekly other than One Piece. I actually prefer watching a series I love weekly rather than binging it all, except for One Piece, pacing is constipation (slow and painful). Other than the vast enjoyment I got out of Re Zero, the main reason it made it to this list is because of the light novel comparisons I watch. Aninews is my favorite source. He compares the episode to the light novels, mentioning what was left out and further describing the emotions and thoughts of the characters. He tends to release the “Cut Content” videos a week after the episode airs, but the content and quality are incomparable. I found the videos to be so amazing I am basically just as excited for the weekly videos as the Re Zero episodes themselves. If you love Re Zero, the Cut Content series is a must watch.

The fantastic details and emotions the light novels are able to portray are stunning. I decided to read the light novels recently, but the only issue is that I am very short on time. But for each novel I complete, I will release a post on it.

Number 6

Mob Psycho

Although I said I found Haikyuu to be better than most modern shōnen, Mob Psycho is hands down the king. Its quality far surpasses all modern shōnen and a lot of older generation shōnen too. Funny thing is, I believe Mob Psycho’s primary genre is slice of life, not shōnen. I also believe it to be the best take on an overpowered protagonist. One of my favorite things is that Mob, who is the strongest esper we have seen, seems to be so weak. That is exactly how he should be portrayed; he is still a child with mental challenges that he is constantly trying to overcome. The themes that Mob Psycho explores are some of my favorites. The animation is a bit weird at first, but after watching it, you suddenly realize how brilliant it is.

(Honorable Mentions)

Attack on Titan

I am going to get a lot of hate for not including this in my top 5, let alone my top 15. Attack on Titan is still releasing episodes, so that opinion may change soon but let me be clear about one thing: Attack on Titan is a masterpiece. It is absolute greatness. The hype and enjoyment I get out of Attack on Titan are out of this world. But, a) the enjoyment feels a bit short-lived for me personally. It is a fantastic week after airing, but I tend to forget about it the next. b) Attack on Titan is simply not my type of show. Again, I do love Attack on Titan. Again, it is a masterpiece. And again, it may bump up a bit after a few episodes release, but as of now, Attack on Titan isn’t in my top 15.

(Honorable Mentions)

No Game No Life

Similar to One Punch Man, I thought No Game No Life was an anime for senseless fun and enjoyment. But then I watched the movie. The movie is canon to the light novels, but it is irrelevant to the plot and only contributes to the understanding of the world. However, since I watched that movie, I felt the world of No Game No Life to be more realistic. Of course, a world where games resolve all sorts of conflicts like war is ridiculous. But after watching the movie, that ridiculousness somehow turned to reality. The world of No Game No Life became fascinating to me, and what seemed like dumb games began to turn into political machinations.

(Honorable Mention)

Magi & Yona of the Dawn

All I have to say about these two anime is that they seemed to be very fascinating premises and concepts, but the anime sadly stops for both. I am considering reading the manga for both of them sometime soon, so this list may change once I do.

Number 5

Hunter x Hunter

If you like shōnen, I don’t see why you would hate Hiatus x Hai—I mean Hunter x Hunter. The only thing it slightly lacks is a strong main cast, which many people like anyway. Otherwise, absolute perfection. They have most of the best villains in all of anime: Hisoka, Chrollo, Meruem… How can you not love Meruem? And the way he parallels with Gon but in the opposite direction: just perfection. The arcs are hard to rank because they are all perfection in their own right. The best power system in anime is nothing short but perfection. If it weren’t for the Hiatus, it would be ranked fourth. I doubt it would scratch my top three.

Number 4

Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I know I kept saying perfection when talking about Hunter x Hunter, but I actually believe that Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the perfect series (Note: I am not saying that no one can love it and that it has to be your #1; obviously there are preferences. I’m merely saying that it perfectly crafts what it is trying to portray). The only two arguments you can bring is that the beginning is weak. But if you watch the 03 version, there are no issues whatsoever, in my eyes. Keep in mind, when I say it is the best, I mean from a narrative standpoint. Yes, the animation isn’t the greatest, and the gags are kind of bad, but from a general narrative standpoint, it is the best writing I have ever seen. The plot was brilliant and well-crafted. The world is beautifully bound by their power system: alchemy. The philosophical discussions and themes it explores always have you thinking. The characters are very likable and are all top tier characters. The mysteries keep you in a cycle of confusion and excitement. Since I love science and chemistry, alchemy was so fascinating to me. This show is definitely well-deserving of the number one rank in My Anime List.

Number 3

Kill la Kill

After listing a lot of the best anime/manga with the best stories and narratives, I can see why someone would be upset that I brought up Kill la Kill. This one is certainly the odd one out. However, remember me mentioning that the enjoyment factor is the biggest decision maker in my list placement? Kill la Kill gave me the most enjoyment out of all the anime on this list, even more significant than the obvious #1. I didn’t find anything to be all that brilliant in Kill la Kill, and I can completely understand if someone hated this particular show. But there was something about Kill la Kill that made me feel nostalgic in a weird way. It also gave me one of the weirdest yet most immense feeling of satisfaction I have ever felt. I love Kill la Kill.

Number 2

Konosuba

           Okay yeah, this one is also the odd one out, but it is a little more acceptable. I find Konosuba to be the best comedy anime of all time. Not necessarily because it is the funniest anime (I think it is the funniest but comedy is subjective), but instead because, unlike most comedies, like Nichijo, the characters in Konosuba are absolutely brilliant. Kazuma is one of my favorite characters of all time, Megumi is best girl, but I still love both Darkness and Aqua. Their interactions are absolutely entertaining on both a comedic scale and a general enjoyment scale. Their assholeish-type relationship reflects my relationship with my friends (we are complete assholes to each other, but we also love one another).

Not only that but from the comedy focused anime that I have watched, the plot in this one is actually delightful. The Konosuba movie is my favorite movie of all time, right after A Silent Voice.

Number 1

One Piece

If you read a couple of my previous posts or recognized my profile picture, you probably knew that One Piece is my favorite anime of all time. My love for One Piece is so extensive that I would rather forget all my experiences with anime than forget my experience with One Piece. One Piece inspired me and changed my life. Not in the typical way where I learned a life lesson from the story like Plastic Memories, but simply because I found the writing to be so brilliant. So it was more that Eiichiro Oda, the author of One Piece, inspired me. The characters are the best I have ever seen, the villains are well crafted, the world-building is literally the best in all of fiction, the build-up is fascinating, the questions from the mysteries somehow keep piling over, the symbolism fleshes out aspects of the anime even more, the backstories make characters more relatable and understandable, the general dynamic flow of the world feels like reality, the themes it explores are great learning experiences, the originality never ends, the hype moments keep you energetic for more, the foreshadowing is so phenomenal to the extent where it shouldn’t exist, and the general planning of the story makes it obvious how amazing of an author Eiichiro Oda is.

This series has been airing weekly for nearly 22 years now, the manga for 25. How in the world is Oda able to create this monster of a story, planning certain elements a decade or two in advance? This is brilliance. This is beauty in writing. And I want nothing more than to create a masterpiece of my own.

Final Notes

Emotional, I know. I believe my list here is a bit diverse in terms of genre: shōnen, seinen, romance, comedy, sports, slice-of-life, and mystery. I think it’s a great thing to widen your horizons a bit by exploring various types of genres. Anyway, there are many anime I haven’t watched that could easily replace and dethrone some of the anime on this list. I plan on watching and reading Hajime no Ippo, Gintama, Vagabond, Oyasumi Pun Pun, I”s, etc. I heard these anime/manga are considered the best for their respective genres by many people, and I will probably finish reading and watching these anime/manga in about six months. So I will make a top 15 anime list once again around that time.

If you have any questions or you want to discuss something, feel free to ask in the “Ask Me Anything” tab on my Tumblr page.

[gayregis]

I've listened to the part where Geralt talks with a very ill Cahir about Ciri and vengeance... it was one of the most emotional parts of the book by itself but also thanks to your take about the lost innocence of Ciri ! I felt it thrice hard in the feelings! Also, do you have thoughts on the declared love of Cahir for Ciri? Personally I see it as disturbingly romantic, let's say. Thank you for your commitment to the books and sorry to bother you

omg thank you for the ask. first of all i have to say you’re not bothering me!! tbh i have been loving getting asks because it gives me an opportunity to like bring more discussion to the witcher community... 

i feel like although reblogging pretty gifs of characters/landscapes from tw3 and any good fanart i can find is nice, my FAVORITE thing to do is write or read a really long textpost about the witcher books, i really like the discussion aspect of fandoms where people post their reactions and opinions to the content they like, because you get a bunch of shared reactions and differing opinions.

so no this is NOT a bother at all, and its nice especially to get asks about topics that i have strong feelings about but have not made posts about yet, like this one

ok, as for the actual topic: i hate forced heterosexuality, so you KNOW i hate that canon cahiri! it was out of line from sapkowski and imo, it came out of absolutely nowhere in tower of the swallow, it wasn’t something built up to or foreshadowed at all, so it felt not only weird in context but weird for sapkowski as an author.

my main problem with canon cahiri: i think it’s super creepy!

first of all, let’s discuss the age difference. cahir in baptism of fire is estimated to be “not over 25,” which i see as putting him around 20 to 25 years old, and i usually take the median of this which is around 23. while this “not over 25″ comment is said in the context of the hansa to remark upon how young cahir is (i believe it’s thought of by either geralt or dandelion, and geralt is around 60 years old and as a witcher he looks 45, and dandelion is 38 in tower of the swallow), and how cahir is described as a young man in time of contempt to illustrate that he has a sense of innocence to him as ciri cuts him down, his age gap with ciri is super innappropriate for anything to occur between them, since she is 10 or 11 during the massacre of cintra (as stated by geralt in something more), so she would be around 14 at thanedd, and 15-16 during baptism of fire to lady of the lake. so sapkowski deemed it fit to pair a 23 year old man with a 16 year old girl. this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this, what with essi being “not over 18″ and shani also bein around 18 / college age, and yennefer canonically looking around 20. listen, the man has some messed up values when it comes to women’s ages. we have to take it upon ourselves as people who like the not-weird parts of canon to understand how worldviews and personal biases affect one’s writing, and change it for ourselves to make it right so we can continue interacting with it, if we so choose (tldr: retcon some shit when it’s fucked up in canon).

now, before someone argues that “it’s fantasy medieval world, medieval relationships between men and women were just like that,” believe me, i am aware. i study ancient greece/rome and men who were in their 30s were most often paired with women in their teens as part of their arranged marriages. that is how their ancient societies functioned more than 2000 years ago. the issue is that this is a fantasy world, in which societal norms and laws do not have to conform to real-life earth history, and this is the work of a modern writer writing in the 1990s. it’s not “just how the times were,” it’s deliberately choosing to include an age gap like that to be something canonically acceptable by their society/ies.

also, one could argue that the age gap would be fine once they are older, like, when ciri becomes an adult she is already medievally-style betrothed to cahir so they start dating when she’s like 20 and he’s like 27. eh... that’s still an uncomfortable age gap, at least for when they’re in their 20s. people in their older 20s have more life experience than people in their younger 20s. but at least it wouldn’t land cahir in modern-day jail.

it’s still just an uncomfortably large age gap, and if you think about it, it’s even creepier considering that cahir met ciri when she was a helpless child around 10 - 11 and it just makes the bathing scene excruciatingly creepy too if you put it in the context that he eventually would fall in love with her. it even begins to not be about strictly age, but about life experience, development, and power imbalance within the relationship. i mean, he did literally kidnap her.

cahir in tos calls ciri a “woman” when she is like, 15 or 16 (with the rose tattoo) (to anyone reading, please don’t come at me with that “the age of consent is 15 in poland, just because it’s 18 in the US doesn’t mean your laws and culture apply to everyone” ... please do not try and justify this with laws, legality is not morality. only saying this because i’ve seen it in other posts). like.... hm! don’t like that! she is a teenager... he is in his 20s... this should not be occuring.

sorry for the loooong explanation, but every time someone brings up the subject of age gaps on tumblr it turns into crazy discourse with everyone trying to justify it.

but yeah, CANONICALLY cahir would have been 16-21 (median 18) when he met ciri at 10-11, and 20-25 (median 23) when he declares his love for her at 15-16. that’s ... not good ... to put it more into perspective, these are their ages on a traditional school system path: a 18 year old is a high school senior, an 11 year old is a 6th grader. a 23 year old has been out of college for 2 years, a 16 year old is a high school sophomore. ITS NOT GOOD

my other problem with canon cahiri: it’s boring and contradicts sapkowski at his own game.

all of the witcher is about taking fantasy tropes and inverting them, like you can’t have some random peasant kill a dragon, you’d need a professional, and also guess what, the dragon isn’t evil but a dad trying to protect his wife and child.

all of the characters in the hansa (as well as the four main characters of geralt, yennefer, ciri, and dandelion) are inversions of the tropes they represent. for some examples, milva’s trope is something like the hot action girl who only exists to be the only girl in the company and to be sexy eye candy. instead of falling into this, she is actually an action girl, not bothering with sexiness and appeal to the gaze of a male audience but a “get shit done” type, who also dresses and acts “like a man.” regis’ trope is all vampire tropes ever. he/vampires in the witcher doesn’t/don’t fall into any of the traditional european vampire myths like burning in sunlight, needing to drink blood to stay alive, being disdainful of humanity, having aversions to garlic, belonging to a super-secret orderful society that lurks in the shadows and controls everything like puppetmasters, etc... instead, he is the epitome of redemption arcs and overall “goody-goodiness,” understands humanity perfectly and does things out of his good nature. i already talk about regis too much, so i’ll quit it. 

cahir is an inversion of every knight trope ever, particularly the evil knight. he scars ciri’s memory as a night terror, but actually is not ... a bad person. he’s just some guy, pressured by his family and his society to do what he saw as an assignment like a college kid might see their final essay assignment posted on canvas. except you know. the final exam was to kidnap a girl. and he got an F on that and failed the course (ie got thrown in prison). ANYWAYS, cahir is meant to be this inversion of the knight tropes, so WHY, WHY, WHY make him become the knight trope of being the one to romance and to save a hapless princess? if we’ve learned anything about ciri, it’s that she’s the inversion of the princess trope! she KILLS PEOPLE. she ALMOST KILLED CAHIR. she can defend herself and kill for herself, she doesn’t need the knight trope going to protect her! 

heterosexual romance as the Big Reason and Motivation behind all of a character’s actions is tiring, annoying, boring, and not well-thought out. it’s so base and not unique, it doesn’t fit in with everything else about the witcher.

how i would fix it: not make them fall in love.

cahir already HAS a motivation to find ciri and to help her. he needs to APOLOGIZE. he needs to say, hey, i’m sorry i kidnapped you and ruined your life, i made peace with your dad, he doesn’t wanna kill me anymore, i can only hope that you can forgive me too after i SET THINGS RIGHT. 

as opposed to regis’s arc (i swear i am not playing favorites with regis, i just tend to compare and contrast regis and cahir’s redemptions because they are quite different yet they join the hansa side by side so they’re bound to be compared), cahir actually can find the one (not many) people he wronged, and set things right on his own accord, not go forth with a larger mission to assist all humanity, or whatever.

i think cahir also had this WONDERFULLY UNDERUTILIZED anti-imperialist message as part of his character that pains me to see being swept under the rug for some cheap lame romance story. sapkowski already created some anti-war sentiments with the battle of the bridge in baptism of fire, and he tried to create anti-racism sentiments throughout the book/at the end of lady of the lake. anti-imperialism fits with the rest of the saga as a message.

the fact that cahir was instructed by his family to hate the northern kingdoms, despite the fact that they were related to northerners, is really profound as something to happen to a character, and holds a lot of meaning in today’s society. the fact that he broke, finally, after he lost ciri, just completely lost his mind and had to be restrained because he was wailing so hard, because of the pressure that this society put him under to succeed and achieve pride for his family, is such a great example of the tragedies of society. then he speaks out against his leader and is jailed... and yet, after this, he gets to learn from his mistakes and redeem himself as a good person, and his character has developed SO much. he is not doing what his country wants him to do, he is not doing what his family wants him to do. he is doing what he wants to do because it is the RIGHT thing to do. that already is such a powerful message, he doesn’t need anymore character motivation!

so yep that’s my thoughts on why cahir is a good character asides from all that forced romance biz

[kiarasdeclassified]

how to write a foolproof DBQ essay

the document-based question essay, or dbq as everyone in the ap history realm likes to call it, is arguably the most dreaded part of any ap history essay. the time constraints are short, there’s way too much stimulus to get through on time, and meanwhile, you have no clue if you’re getting all 7 points. maybe you can just skip it? maybe if you write a really sloppy essay you’ll at least get a 3 on the exam? or, maybe, you can follow this guide in preparation for another post coming later this summer & ace your dbq every. single. time.

first things first, you should get comfortably familiar with the official college board dbq rubric. 

i’ve simplified the descriptions a bit so you can better understand them.

thesis statement (1 point) construct a sentence located in either the introduction or conclusion which adequately responds to the prompt rather than just restating it.

contextualization (1 point) describe a broader historical context related to the prompt in about three sentences.

evidence (1-2 points) accurately describe content from at least six documents without quoting to get the first point, then use the content to support the argument described in the thesis to get the second point.

analysis & reasoning (2 points) explain how at least three of the documents’ point of view, historical situation, intended audience or authorial purpose is relevant to the argument described in the thesis.

synthesis/outside evidence (1 point) demonstrate a better understanding of the prompt by relating the argument to another piece of specific historical evidence found outside of the documents (use a specific example rather than a simple phrase or reference; this can be done in up to 5 sentences, but if written properly, just 1 can suffice).

total: 7 points

next, here’s a few things that you should know before preparing to write a dbq:

while i did take ap world history during my sophomore year & wrote some practice dbq’s, i never took the ap world exam, so here’s some tips from my ap world teacher who has taught ap world for almost 17 years:

don’t stress over complexity. while it seems as though every single essay you provide to the college board has to demonstrate your complex vocabulary, they really don’t care if you use “a lot” instead of “plentiful” or “numerous.” all they’re looking for is those 7 points on the essay.

don’t stick to formatting so much. like i said, the college board doesn’t care about a perfect essay when it comes to history exams. while ideally, you’ll have 4-5 paragraphs in your essay, all you are required to do is hit all 5 criteria of the rubric & include an introduction & conclusion. your essay could be 6 paragraphs long; your essay could be 14 paragraphs long; your essay could be just 3 paragraphs long. as long as you did something to satisfy all criteria, you can safely secure your 7 points & be on your merry way.

do NOT make an outline. you only get 55 minutes to write your essay. creating an outline, which seems like a helpful way to ensure you get all 7 points in theory, will actually just cut down the time you have to actually expand that outline into a full essay by 15-20 minutes. even if it only takes you 5 minutes to write the outline, DON’T DO IT. i promise you, every minute of this essay will matter, especially since its handwritten & you’ll take longer to write it versus if the test was taken digitally.

structure as you go. to elaborate on my previous point, as you read each document & transition from reading to writing, you’ll want to start getting an idea in your head of how exactly you’re going to answer the prompt & turn your thesis into an essay. i’ll go more into detail about structuring later in this post.

let’s quickly go over historical bias:

historical bias plays a part in every document you’ll receive on the dbq, even if it doesn’t seem as though the document you’re reading has any bias in it whatsoever. there are four parts you can choose to write about for your analysis points, commonly abbreviated to HIPP by many ap history teachers so you can better remember them. however, my teacher used “SOAP,” an abbreviation which i personally like a lot better as it tends to be slightly simpler:

S - speaker: the author who wrote the document. for example, if reading documents relating to a prompt about early twentieth century work conditions in the US, a journal entry written by a worker will show bias toward the opinion that work conditions were subpar, as it is a firsthand account of how work conditions truly were.

O - occasion: the historical timeframe which the document was written in. for example, if reading documents relating to a prompt about the Great Depression, a chart showing government spending rates overtime will show bias toward the theory that the GD affected not only citizens but national governments.

A - audience: the intended audience for the document. for example, if reading documents relating to a prompt about Luther’s Reformation, a letter to a Catholic pope from a reformist will show bias toward the theory that reformists wanted to persuade Catholics into conversion.

P - purpose: the purpose for writing the document. for example, if reading documents relating to a prompt about the Opium Wars, a newspaper article published in Britain urging others to support the war will show bias toward the theory that the British wanted to push their goal of opening a trade market with China.

now, here’s everything you need to write a perfect thesis statement:

the thesis statement tends to be one of the hardest parts of writing the dbq essay. while it is only 1 point, there’s so much criteria you need to fill to actually get the point. there are absolutely no half points given, so if you miss one thing, you miss the entire point. it’s not your fault, but it’s 100% your problem.

the simplest format i can suggest for a successful thesis is the following:

- restate the prompt.

- answer the prompt. 

- give reasons as to why your answer to the prompt is arguable. this part is crucial, as it will help tons in creating body paragraphs.

what i recommend doing is searching up dbq prompts from old ap exams & trying to write proper thesis statements out of them. every tuesday, my ap world teacher would put a sample prompt on the board, have us spend all class reading our prep books for information on the prompt, then writing thesis statements. before class ended, he would check them & let us know whether or not we’d get the point if we were taking the exam. try this out yourself, & if you don’t have an ap history teacher to check them for you, see if your thesis answers the following questions my teacher always used to determine point-worthy theses:

“so what?” a thesis which does not answer this question needs clarification, a relationship between the reasons & your answer, or a connection to a larger issue.

improper thesis: the north & south fought the civil war for many reasons, some of which were the same & some different.

better thesis: while both sides fought the civil war over the issue of slavery, the north fought for moral reasons while the south fought to preserve its own institutions.

“how & why?” a thesis which does not answer this question is too open-ended & lacks guidance for the reader. for example, if you look at the better thesis i wrote above, it answers “so what?” but still lacks clarity. we can help specify exactly what we’re referring to with a little tweaking:

while both northerners & southerners fought the civil war against what they each considered oppression, northerners focused on oppression of slaves while southerners focused on oppression of their right to self-govern.

in addition to proper structuring, it’s good to know what exactly the college board is looking for in an answer so that you can be sure to pass the question-answering tests. the college board loves to throw in specific key words in their prompts which can also make everything seem like it’s all sounding the same. here’s a few of the most popular dbq prompt key words you may see when you take the exam for yourself & what to do if you see them.

evaluate

to determine the value of

evaluate the extent to which differing ideas of national identity shaped views of United States overseas expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

use any word which indicates value in your thesis. for example, “differing ideas greatly shaped views” or “differing ideas did little to shape views.”

identify

to indicate what something is

identify the reasons early Islamic societies used to justify slavery

perhaps the most straightforward of all key words, simply list your reasons. “early Islamic societies used …”

analyze

to examine and/or explain closely in detail

analyze the responses of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration to the problems of the great depression.

use words which demonstrate detail in your thesis. for example, “administration’s responses to the problems included ...” or “administration’s responses to the problems described ...”

compare/contrast

to find similarities & differences

compare the motives of the North and South for participating in the American Civil War.

separate your comparisons from your contrasts. for example, “while both northerners & southerners _____, northerners _____ while southerners _____.”

determine

to figure out, to establish a fact

determine the success of twentieth century African decolonization efforts.

use either a direct positive or negative word to defend your argument in your thesis. for example, “decolonization efforts were greatly successful” or “decolonization efforts were not successful.”

now that you know what you need to prepare for beforehand, let’s go over what to do during the exam.

to ensure you can complete the essay in time, try your best to stick to a mini-schedule recommended by the college board: spend 15 minutes reading your documents & 40 minutes writing the essay. the quicker you can finish reading (not just skimming through the documents, but instead reading thoroughly & gaining a clear understanding of each document without having to completely reread them), the more time you’ll have to write, so try to work quickly, but don’t rush yourself so that you have time to process each document & their meanings.

to help simplify the writing portion, there’s a few things you should try to accomplish while reading:

read all documents

off to the side, summarize each document without quoting or paraphrasing. mention all parts of document. to save time, when you need to reference it again, use your summary instead of rereading. these summaries can be used to help get your evidence point.

identify 1-3 parts of historical bias (remember SOAP) if possible for each document. this will help you get your analysis point.

categorize documents by reasons for supporting a certain argument, opinions, political biases, etc.; this will help you write the reasons in your thesis.

write your thesis & incorporate all parts; proper structuring, keyword answer, & clarity for your reasons.

& finally, time to write the essay!

since there’s no real tips or strategies that’ll help you specifically write the essay (as i can’t tell you how to answer every possible prompt you’ll be given), here’s an outline that if written correctly WILL get you all 7 points no matter what.

introduction paragraph

contextualize (broadly explain historical context and/or timeframe related to prompt) in 3 sentences

thesis statement

body paragraphs

topic sentence for each reason

write document summary & it’s significance (use as many documents as needed for each reason) for 6 documents throughout all body paragraphs, aim to do this for 7 documents

explain historical bias & significance for at least 3 documents throughout all body paragraphs, try to do this for 5 documents

closing sentence

concluding paragraph

synthesize (incorporate outside evidence) in 3 sentences

restate thesis

my last piece of advice: relax.

while the dbq essay tends to be incredibly intimidating to a lot of the students who cross its path, it truly can be done successfully with proper preparation & a solid strategy. after reading this incredibly lengthy post, save it, screenshot it, take note of it somehow & you can look over this + other resources later on to help you study. at the end of the day, it’s still possible to get at least a good score on the ap exam without a flawless dbq essay; so instead of focusing all of your energy into one thing, just take a breath & give yourself breaks when you need to. good luck, & happy studying! :)

[bloglaroo-blog]

True Confidence

If you're like me, you've spent a long time searching for true confidence. I couldn't find this unicorn for such a long time that I almost thought that people collectively lied about its existence. Because wouldn't true confidence be too much of dominant treasure? If you had that, wouldn't you be a little too unstoppable? Sounds too much like a superpower. I stopped looking. Until I came across MMA and accidentally found people who, in fact, had a bit of superhero inside them to me. I decided I would fake it till I made it, secretly convinced that I never would. Nonetheless I'd fake it SO hard that I'd give myself every opportunity. It didn’t matter if I lowkey didn’t believe I could reach my dreams, I will show up everyday and work hard consistently because if I did have that true confaidence, I figure that's what I'd do.

Compared to your average American, majority of us in the MMA community have developed some level of genuine confidence. It's commonly referred to as the greatest thing combat can offer. Everyone I surround myself with exudes that energy but I think everyone can agree that there's no better example of authentic confaidence than in Joey Villsener. He's my head coach with good reason! I've never met someone so secure, honourable, articulate, assertive, and generally imperturbable by this world. Its inspired me to one day reach that level of confidence as well! I studied him in particularly and all my teammates everyday. It was only when I surrounded myself with greatness did I start finding my answers.

See, you don't actually develop true confidence, you EARN that shit.

Let's start with an example, as I think that’ll make this concept easier and quicker to grasp. There’s a new person at work. His shiney name tag neatly pinned on his tucked in button down reveals his name to be Bob. As the days go on you can’t help but notice that Bob always arrives at his desk 15 minutes early and performs his daily duties diligently. He brings doughnuts to the office every second Sunday and the smile he flashes you along with the cheery “Good Morning!” greetings seems sincere.

Your brain, forged from years of evolutionary programming, unconsciously came to a few conclusions about Bob based on what you just read.  You probably would describe Bob as a dedicated employee and a hard worker. He’s happy. He really goes above and beyond what’s expected of him. That office is very lucky to have a guy like Bob around.

Just as we formed an opinion on others based on what we observed them do, we also form an opinion on ourselves based on what we do. The biggest difference between opinions formed on others verses ourselves is that we are a constant witness to our own behavior 24/7 while we only see others for periods of authorized time. In short while we might be able to wear a fake personality, we can never lie to ourselves, at least not enough to convince true confidence.

I realized a while back that it’s impossible to have true confidence if you are not genuinely you 100% of the time. (But that’s another essay for later!) The key now is in becoming consciously aware enough of yourself to make those positive choices. To observe yourself overcoming, completing tasks, keeping the little promises you make with yourself, changing your inner dialogue, this is how you slowly fill your cup with confadience.

I think of Joey and all the challenges he's conquered not only in his fight career, but in his life. His uniquely vivid confidence makes sense considering it reflects the uniquely vivid life he's lived. A core belief in yourself comes from overcoming shit you didn’t think you could overcome again and again and again.

This concept is easier said than done. Its fucking insanely hard and time consuming! It takes a certain level of self discipline that tends to be extremely under developed within normal social circles. Again another essay all in itself but the main the key development being not to treat self discipline as a punishment but instead as a means to your rewards. Learning to love and welcome self discipline. Self discipline isn’t scary.  Discipline with a purpose in particular, is the path to true confidence. A wise man one told me, ‘Needless suffering is a pathway to depression while that same suffering with a just cause is a pathway to enlightenment.’ (I now realize comes from The Third Noble Truth of Buddaish.)

That’s exactly what I believe all my loved ones at Jacksons have done along with many MMA fighters. We’ve faced adversity, been uncomfortable, and particularly have built that into our life styles. In order to gain more, you have to do more. It’s important to think of confidence not as a state of being, not as a periment status, but instead a cup constantly being drank and filled up with choices that support our dreams and goals.

In short, true confidence is a lot like maintaining your weight, generally speaking. It’s a reflection of our personal habits over a long period of time. It’s something that can be manipulated once you understand its inner workings and something that needs to be upkept everyday. Just like your diet, there is no lying about it as results are results, how you feel is how you feel. Lastly, just like any fitness goal, it’s individualized towards your own desires and... fucking hard as shit.

A REVIEW

KEYS:  Just as we build opinions observing others, confidence is built from observing ourselves

SKILL SET  1: Genuine authenticity in all areas of your life is mandatory.

SKILL SET  2: Trust yourself, know yourself.

SKILL SET  3: Self Discipline isn’t a punishment rather something to be celebrated.

OVERVIEW: Confidence isn’t developed, it’s earned. Every. Single. Day.

[magalarajoonideprohvetid]

blackouts [transgressive anthropology]

«Wow! I thought the lights went out!» (sudden exclamation by prof. Carlo Cubero at Debates in Anthropology lecture on the 15th of March 2018)

This moment is embedded in my memory, an ultimate manifestation of honesty, said out loud with no restraints, the peak of the lecture, the peak of the whole course – a sudden darkness. I do not know about you but I have on several occasions felt a sudden blackout, like the blink of an eye and I am not sure – did I just blink, did the lights go out for a micro-second, did my brain shutdown for a second, did I have a stroke, did only I (not) see it? Usually I have had others around me to calm me down, «Yes, we saw it also, I think the electricity flickered for a moment.» Is it you, Niko, sending us inter-dimensional messages through your most known invention, chthonic news through alternative current? If there would not be electricity in our households, would I even be writing about this phenomena, is momentary blackout a ‘thing’ without the light bulb? Or am I writing about something completely different, the blackout our unconsciousness creates when our consciousness is not ready for the incoming message?

writing culture

If there are any dogmas in anthropology, it is the inclusion of fieldwork into the methodological frame - for it to count as anthropology, a researcher needs to step out of academia and come back with outsourced data. Yes, it is extremely valuable that there is something new added to the usual academics circular referencing, agency has been given to the unheard and original voices. But in the same time questions arises - what is and when is anthropology? Is it students reading the theories? Or is it anthropologist on the fieldsite? James Clifford analyzes the cover picture of Writing Culture, where Stephen Tyler is writing during his fieldwork:

«In this image the ethnographer hovers at the edge of the frame—faceless, almost extraterrestrial, a hand that writes. It is not the usual portrait of anthropological fieldwork. We are more accustomed to pictures of Margaret Mead exuberantly playing with children in Manus or questioning villagers in Bali. Participant observation, the classic formula for ethnographic work, leaves little room for texts.» (Clifford, 1)

This picture gives the impression than an anthropologist does everything in the field, he participates, observes and simultaneously writes. In reality the ‘real’ writing happens retrospectively, and that might be one of the biggest problems of anthropology – there is no anthropology of the present, the reproducible anthropology is classically done in the post-fieldwork stage. This is valid for both ethnographic writing and film, as both ‘texts’ are produced afterwards. Doing currently auto-fieldwork, being on ‘ramadan-mode’, I am deeply stressed as I cannot do much writing, my notes are scribbles bearing no great weight, I am too heavily influenced and too stuck in the actual experience to do any reflective writing. Vincent Crapanzano says similar things about Goethe’s experience of the carnival:

«A conventional Ash Wednesday meditation, perhaps, Goethe's conclusion marks are turn to contemplation, introspection, and concern for the meaning of what we do. His “return” parallels a return in the ceremony he describes. During the carnival there is no reflection, just play, masquerading, and, as we say nowadays, acting out. With Ash Wednesday begins a period of penitence, and, we must presume, a return to introspection, order, and individuality.» (Crapanzano, 68)

After the experience thou, the author becomes active and starts to describe the lived experiences; how the description is done, how it is reflected and to whom it is directed, that depends on the author. Crapanzano describes the ethnographic encounters of George Caitlin with the Mandan tribe in North America and their initiation rituals of O-Kee-Pa:

«Here Catlin moves from his (objectifying) metaphorical perspective to that of the tortured; despite this move, his intention is not phenomenological, but rhetorical: He does not describe either the Indian's or his own experience of the torture. The «imps and demons as they appear» (to whom? to Catlin? to the Mandan?) is stylistically equivalent to «there is no hope of escape from it.» They are directed to the reader, and it is the reader's reaction that will guarantee Catlin's perceptions.» (Crapanzano, 57)

So Caitlin’s intention was to captivate the reader, to tell the story in a way that it works specifically on the reader, it is not him nor Native Americans in the story he has written, it is the reader he is trying to drag into the story. In Caitlin’s case, the author is playing around with the reader’s morality and the reader’s possible endeavor toward morality. Crapanzano gives another example, where the author is more inclined to play on the ‘dirty’ thoughts of the reader by using contemporary puns:

«The title of Clifford Geertz’s essay «Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight,» written about the time the film Deep Throat was all the rage, announces a series of erotic puns—puns, Geertz maintains, the Balinese themselves would understand—used throughout his essay. Puns are frequent in ethnography. They position the ethnographer between his world of primary orientation, his reader's world, and the world of those others, the people he has studied, whom at some level, I believe, he is also addressing (Crapanzano 1977a). Through the pun he appeals collusively to the members of one or the other world, usually the world of his readership, there by creating a hierarchical relationship between them. He himself, the punster, mediates between these worlds.» (Crapanzano, 68-69)

Crapanzano’s general theme for the article in Writing Culture is anthropologist/ethnographer as god Hermes, someone who is always bringing messages, someone who is a translator between ‘gods’ and ‘humans’, but whose messages might not contain the whole truth, they (singular!) might be lying for the sake of themself, the informants or for the sake of the readers, they needs to make a convincing case (Ibid, 52).

transgressive fiction

If I have to name three books from high school that really influenced me (both literally and literary), then these books were not and most probably will not be in the obligatory reading list. Two of them were loaned to me by friends, they had read them and suggested that I would be interested – Dead Babies by Amis Martin and The Beach by Alex Garland. Both stories travel in closed communities where sex and drug usage is common among the characters, where atrocities happen to them, and in general the environment of the book, its locus is a degenerate one. If one is to make charts, then Dead Babies is in my opinion a few grades more on the transgressive fiction side than The Beach. Now the third book was Check-out by Estonian author Kaur Kender, the first and last book in Estonia that has had «PARENTAL ADVISORY EXPLICIT CONTENT» sticker on it (only for advertisement reasons, there has not yet been such restrictions in the literary scene). The protagonist of this book is a filthy rich business-man, whose main efforts in life revolve around fornication and intoxication, both fueled by boredom and leading to the humiliation of others as he is capable to do whatever he wants with other people, it is self-destruction and liberation, mirroring society back at itself. Having grown up watching movies like Pulp Fiction and Dobermann, where protagonists are the ‘baddest’ on the conventional moral and ethical paradigm but in the same time there is something likable about them, they stand on the right side of life whilst doing bad things, Check-out did come as a shocker because there was nothing good about the main character, he was utterly bad, none of that misunderstood Robin Hood type of ‘badness’. For the first time I had been transgressed by the author, and I transgressed into the character. In retrospective Kender has said (heard it on a public event of the re-release of the Check-out in 2016), that the character was based on the stories he had witnessed and heard of local businessmen, and of his own alcohol and drug addictions (especially the ending of the book, where the protagonist starts using heroin). His book was based on participant observations and autoethnographical method.

Chuck Palahniuk is most known for his novel Fight Club, made famous by movie adaption and Brad Pitts’ six-packs’. I have not read that novel but I have read Haunted by Palahniuk (that one also has a PARENTAL ADVISORY sticker on the cover, Kender’s book was released almost a decade earlier). It tells the story of a group of people who apply for an experimental creative writing course and are then locked up in an abandoned art-house cinema. Every chapter consists of a poem about the main character of that chapter, a story of her/his origin, and a part of the main narrative with her/him as the leading character in it. The first chapter tells the story of a character named Saint Gut-Free, it consists of three different stories about ‘masturbation gone wrong’, onanism that might have killed the onanists. On page 17 of this 400 page modern horror story I have a blackout, the story becomes so disturbing, so real in my head, every word brings me closer to the conclusion of the story, and in my mind I already know where it is leading, Palahniuk has given enough hints, there is no happy ending, and every word brings it closer and my heart is rushing and I feel noxious… I blackout, I skip a paragraph (of course I read it later), I calm myself and continue reading. Palahniuk writes in the afterword a longer explanation how this story came to life, and how the reception has been so far. We tend to hope that the craziest stories are not the ones taken from real life, that these are made up, the fruit of fantasy. Palahniuk ruins the illusion the same way Kender did:

«No, this week, my writer friends just laughed, and I told them how the three-act story of ‘Guts’ was based on three true anecdotes. Two had happened to friends, and the last had happened to a man I’d met while attending sex addict support groups to research my fourth novel. They were three funny, gradually more upsetting true stories about experiments with masturbation gone wrong. Horribly wrong. Nightmarishly wrong.» (Palahniuk, 407)

Without mudding the water, I say out that in my opinion he was performing a participant observation, he, as many other writers, are ethnographers without the academia and without theory. Palahniuk’s emphasis is not on the credibility, it is on style and on affect:

«Reading ‘Guts’ takes a full head of steam. You don’t get many moments to look up from the page. But when I did, the faces in the front row looked a little gray. Beyond that were questions and answers. The book signing. The End.

It wasn’t until I’d signed the last book that a clerk said two people had fainted. Two young men. They’d both dropped to the concrete floor during ‘Guts’ but they were fine now, with no memory of anything between standing, listening, and waking up surrounded by people’s feet.» (Ibid, 408)

I could have been one of these two fainters, or at least fluctuating between consciousness and blackout. The main question for me is in the affect of the text, how something that is usually considered ‘unreal’ can make us feel physically sick?

transgressive ethnography

In a way, ethnographers have always written transgressive texts, most of the texts describe social norms and activities very different from the one of the audience of these texts. One of the dogmas for transgressive fiction is that the protagonist emerges through the violations of norms as a free(er) individual. One way of describing anthropologist is that they are like translators, who translate different cultures to an understandable format (as a colonialist discipline it used to be for the Europeans but things should have changed?). Another way of describing anthropologists is not so much as an interpreter but an inventor, s/he invents a culture, dogmatizes its principles into an ethnographic ‘holy book’, how this culture should be, has been, and will be, not understanding that it is not how it used to be, that is not how every single person inside that environment and/or space relates to that culture, and people do not have to spend their lives fulfilling the dogmas set in the ethnographer’s ‘holy scripture’ (most probably half a year later there will be a missionary there and everyone is wearing pants and singing songs of our Saviour Jesus). Vincent Crapanzano unites these two description into one:

«Like translation, ethnography is also a somewhat provisional way of coming to terms with the foreignness of languages – of cultures and societies. The ethnographer does not, however, translate texts the way translator does. He must first produce them.» (Crapanzano, 51)

Lets take for instance the infamous case of Margaret Mead and the Samoans. As we know by now, Margaret Mead went to do fieldwork with Samoan, came back and wrote an awesome ethnography on how Samoan teenage girls are sexually liberated. Derek Freeman waits a few years after Margaret Mead’s death, publishes a book on how she was wrong and that Samoans have actually very strict rules for sexual conduct. Now, there are several interpretations for this controversy, and explanations, some of them, like Paul Shankman’s The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy gives more ambivalent interpretation to the sexual norms and behaviors in Samoa (Shankman 1996). It could be possible that both Mead and Freeman just saw different sides of the same society, if there only would not be this moment when one of Mead’s informants tells a retrospective view of the incident:

«Yes she asked us what we did after dark. We girls would pinch each other and tell her that we were out with the boys. We were only joking but she took it seriously. As you know Samoan girls are terrific liars and love making fun of people but Margaret thought it was all true.» (Heimans 1988, 3:36)

So what did she do – ‘translate’ the culture in the wrong way, had wrong data, or maybe she was in a way creating something the readers wanted to hear? Looking at both Mead and Palahniuk I must come to the following conclusions: Samoans lied and we were happy, Palahniuk presumably told the truth and it is disgusting. We as readers, we like to read about ‘sexually liberated’ women, and Samoan girls played that role in Mead’s ethnography really well. In a way, Mead’s ethnography tells more about her own society and herself than about the Samoans, she was giving liberation to the Western world and to herself.

In a discussion about transgressive fiction, we cannot continue without talking about Untitled 12, a modern horror story by Kaur Kender, where the first person protagonist is a pedophile (and sadistic sexual pervert in general). I read the whole story on Nihilist.fm on the night it came out and it was a devastating experience, I skipped parts of it as I was not capable to read even the obviously exaggerated and absurd descriptions of sexual violence, I felt hollowed after that experience, and that was something he wished to accomplish (Kender 2015). What happened was that someone reported to the police, that it might be child pornography (Estonian laws include a very wide range of material from pictures and videos to written text as it might depict underage children in pornographic situations), and police went after it. It was taken to court and got media coverage even outside of Estonia (as it is not usual any longer in Western societies that known writers have been taken to court for these specific charges) (ERR 2017). In the end he was declared innocent by two levels of court, and has since then left Estonia with a promise to never write in Estonian again. But what was very interesting with this case was the possibilities for alternative situations and how would they have been perceived. For instance, if it would have been someone’s personal experiences, someone who had been raped as a child and if that someone writes about this experience with graphic details, could that be also considered child pornography? Or if someone describes their sexual experience as a minor (depending on the explanation of the Penal Code it could be either under 14 or 18 years old), could that be considered child pornography? As a reader, was I consuming unknowingly child pornography if Kender would have been found quilty? These may sound as hypothetical questions, but if one is active in literary world (both as producer and consumer) then these questions become rather substantial.

Untitled 12 is made up, it is fictional, and from this fictional world it became very realistic, I was in court during a few of the open hearings and those benches, the jury and the prosecutor, they were all very real. But how is this all connected to anthropology? In some cases anthropologist are not the good guys, friendly scientist, who participate with respect and observe with sincerity. For instance José Padilha’s documentary Secrets of the Tribe deals with several controversial incidents what different anthropologist researching Yanomami tribe had caused. One of these anthropologist was Jacques Lizot, who according to his victims had raped and sexually abused several young Yanomami boys (Padilha, 42:44-55:08). This was known by other anthropologist and researchers, but it was overlooked for many years and until today there has been no court cases nor other serious consequences for his real transgressions. He transgressed in real life, not in a fictional world, his victims are real human beings and not made up characters. His contribution to anthropology? Yanomami dictionary, with specific terms for sexual activities like masturbation etc.

Lizot case is a real pedophilia case, this kind of behavior is not accepted in the current Western society nor in Yanomami society, it is a taboo. Gilbert Herdt’s case is a little bit different, but the similarities reside in the transgression, in his case it is the witnessing and writing part what matters. Herdt has done fieldwork with the ‘Sambia’ tribe (pseudoneum he created for the tribe) in Papua New Guinea and has published several articles on them and a collection of these articles Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays From the Field (Herdt, 1999). The Sambia tribe used to have a rather controversial initiation rituals for young boys (current situation with these rituals is unknown for me) – they were taken from their mothers at age 9, put through painful purification ritual of bloodletting from the nose, and then forced to perform oral sex on older boys. Later on they become the boys who receive oral sex, and after that they become adult man who will marry a woman and presumably only participate in heterosexual activity. Reasoning behind the ritual is that the bloodletting will purify them from the attachment to their mother (and women in general), and that men are born without semen and to have semen one has to digest semen. Herdt seems to view these rituals from a less negative stance, as a form of bisexuality and gives agency to free sexual desires. James Giles, who has written a review of Herdt’s book, is less enthusiastic about it and clearly questions the rituals as in his opinion they are not connected to desire at all:

«… sexual behavior can be engaged in for numerous reasons, many of which have nothing to do with sexual desire (Giles, 2004). This fact is especially important to be aware of when one is studying the sexual desires of people from a sexually nonpermissive and prescriptive culture like that of the Sambia.» (Giles, 2004, 414)

Now my point is neither condemning of Sambian rituals nor Herdt’s presentation and analyze of them, my point lies much more in the product, in the ethnography. If an anthropologist writes on a similar topic, something that is in generally considered a taboo topic, that s/he describes with graphic details, then there is a chance, at least in Estonia, that someone might complain to the police, as was the case with Kender’s book. Police will then forward it to the “Porn-committee”, expert committee in Ministry of Culture, who will then decide if it is pornographic or not. We might say “But this is science and it is protected by the constitution”, but this was also the case with Kender – both are protected by the constitution:

«§ 38. Science and art and their teachings are free. Universities and research institutions are autonomous within the limits prescribed by the law.» (The Constitution of the Republic of Estonia)

What is problematic, is the Penal Code, definition of child pornography is rather broad and thus it can include different forms of it:

Ǥ 178. Manufacture of works involving child pornography or making child pornography available

(1) Manufacture, acquisition or storing, handing over, displaying or making available to another person in any other manner of pictures, writings or other works or reproductions of works depicting a person of less than eighteen years of age in a pornographic situation, or a person of less than fourteen years of age in a pornographic or erotic situation, is punishable by a pecuniary punishment or up to three years’ imprisonment.» (Penal Code)

I have been so far talking only in the context of written text, most probably the situation becomes more difficult if the text includes pictures, Allah forbid if it is not text but a film. In case it includes pictures, or if it is a film, then we have a serious ethical and moral problem, and that is not even connected to the child pornography laws. It is a question for us anthropologist, can we and should we show visual data to others, are we abusing the right for privacy, are we exploiting our informants? A great friend of mine had a self-made zine which he called National Pornographic, he had taken old National Geographic editions, cut out all pictures of naked ‘indigenous’ people and glued them together with added sensual texts. He did it purposely to show how Western society has sexualized the ‘natives’, how their breasts and nipples can be shown without censoring, as if the same rules do not apply to ‘them’ as do to ‘us’. National Geographic is a safe haven for monsters like Lizot.

[non]clusion

There are occasions when anthropologists truly transgress. And there are occasions when anthropologists write truly transgressive ethnographies. Unfortunately it usually happens after they themselves have been transgressed. Such is the case when reading Eva Moreno’s chapter Rape in the field in collection Taboo: Sex, Identity, and Erotic Subjectivity in Anthropological Fieldwork (Moreno 1995). First, and basically the foremost, she builds the story (ibid. 219-232), like the rapist built the assault on her, she builds it the same way as Palahniuk built his story, the reader is obviously hinted from the title that there will be rape but she is calmly leading the reader toward the rape, adding with the suspension until one fatal page she hits us with it. And I do blackout again, skipping paragraphs ashamed as I have a privilege to do it, she did not have a chance to skip it. The reflection part of the chapter (Ibid, 236-248) adds other layers, it elongates the rape but in a weird way calms the reader as you will see the surviving after the rape. I do not know her feelings about the chapter and writing it, but it does feel as if she has done something that is more on the positive side than on the negative one, that this text has been written with traumatic emancipation.

What seems to be essential in this inner discussion is the role of the author. These texts (both literary and audiovisual ones) would not exist without the author, people and culture and practices and incidents would abide in their own realm as they are, but these texts need the author. And as much as these texts need the author, so does the author need the texts, it is a validation of their experience. Having just finished Michael Muhammad Knight’s Osama Van Halen, sequel for his debut novel Taqwacores, I feel compelled to do something with the author. Knight’s take on the author was that he included himself as character into a fictional story, as Michael Muhammad Knight and as ‘the author’, he tossed himself around in the novel until he is beheaded by one of the main characters, by ‘burqa wearing riot grrrl’ Rabeya (Knight 2009, 207). Is the symbolical beheading of the discipline, the removal of the ‘mind’ and revival of the body, is that something that I am after as an author? Sometimes we need to blackout to flashin.

«Sun set a few hours ago, and moon is not around. Sky is striped with clouds, stratocumulus and stratus clouds, altocumulus and altostratus clouds, they are all there. Midnight prayer was already 2 hours ago and I look on horizon as the rays of dawn shine there. Smoke diffuses and the bud drops in the ashtray, I recede to lay on my bed and to watch the first season of Narcos. As the violence on screen escalates, I have doubts in my sanity, I think I am hallucinating as I continuously see flashes of lightning outside of my window. Delusions were happening already on the first week of Ramadan, I saw glimpses of movement, small swirls of energy in midair, flashes of something from the corner of my eye. Today there is lightning I see from the corner of my eye, moments of flash/ins instead of black/outs. It’s not raining and the clouds are not dark, air doesn’t feel as it has been electrified to that extent. Kristi is sleeping and I can’t get verification from anyone. After the first flash I think maybe it was some kind of trick my mind played on me, after second one I think maybe it was a reflection from TV, after the third one I assume it was an ambulance car light (I live next to a hospital). After the fourth and final flash I am afraid to look out from the window, instead I drink my last glass of water and pray dawn prayer. 17th day of Ramadan has a weird start. As I fall to sleep, I hear the rain arriving, it sooths my fears of going insane. I saw the lightning and heard the rain, but I didn’t hear the thunder nor see the drops.» (Fieldwork notes; 17th of Ramadan, 1439 / 2nd of June, 2018)

References

Clifford, James. 1986. Introduction: Partial Truths. In James Clifford & George E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography ( 1 – 27 ). Berkeley, California and London, England: University of California Press.

The Constitution of the Republic of Estonia.

Retrieved June 5, 2018 from

https://www.riigiteataja.ee/en/eli/530102013003/consolide

Crapanzano, Vincent. 1986. Hermes’ Dilemma: The Masking of Subversion in Ethnographic Description. In James Clifford & George E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (pages of chapter). Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

ERR. 2016. Finnish PEN club: Kender’s ‘U12’ is a ‘grotesque thriller’, not child porn. Eesti Rahvusringhääling (ERR). Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://news.err.ee/118569/finnish-pen-club-kender-s-u12-is-a-grotesque-thriller-not-child-porn

Garland, Alex. 1999. Rand [The Beach] (Turu, Rein, Trans.). Tallinn, Estonia: Varrak.

Giles, James. 2004. Book Reviews: Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays From the Field. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 33(4), 413–417.

Heimans, Frank (Director). 1988. Margaret Mead and Samoa [Documentary]. Cremorne, New South Wales: Cinetel Productions. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8puR-AaSrg

Herdt, Gilbert. 1999. Sambia Sexual Culture: Essays From the Field. Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

Kender, Kaur. 2001. Check out. Tallinn, Estonia: Pegasus.

Kender, Kaur. 2015, January 14. Mõned sõnad Untitled 12 kohta [Few words about Untitled 12] [Web log post]. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from http://nihilist.fm/moned-sonad-untitled-12-kohta/

Kender, Kaur. 2014. Untitled 12. Nihilist.Fm : ZA/UM

Knight, Michael Muhammad. 2009. Osama Van Halen. Brooklyn, New York: Soft Skull Press

Martin, Amis. 2000. Surnud lapsed [Dead Babies] (Metsaots, Kati, Trans.). Tallinn, Estonia: Olion.

Moreno, Eva. 1995. Rape in the field. In Don Kulick & Margaret Willson (Eds.), Taboo: Sex, identity, and erotic subjectivity in anthropological fieldwork. London, England: Routledge.

Padilha, José (Director). 2010. Secrets of the Tribe [Documentary]. Brazil: Avenue B Productions Zazen Produções. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd7SXbsn0hU

Palahniuk, Chuck. 2006. Haunted. London, England: Vintage Books.

Penal Code of the Republic of Estonia. Retrieved June 5, 2018 from https://www.riigiteataja.ee/en/eli/522012015002/consolide

Shankman, Paul. 1996. The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy. American Anthropologist, 98(3), 555-567.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT VC

Plus founders who've just raised money are often encouraged to overhire by the VCs who funded them. A rounds already are high res. This way of framing the question probably guarantees failure. I'd say this if I were talking to a friend what you just wrote. The bad news is that I got over 100 other responses listing the surprises they encountered. It's amazing how easily you can reach out to people and get immediate feedback.1 Benjamin Franklin learned to write by summarizing the points in the essays of Addison and Steele and then trying to reproduce work someone else has already done for them. Stanford students are more entrepreneurial than Yale students, but not because of some difference in their characters; the Yale students just have fewer examples. After a few seconds it struck me that what we'll end up calling these things is tablets. A hacker working on some programming language or operating system might likewise be able to do the same thing with detective stories.

Which means if the qualities that make someone a great programmer are evenly distributed, 95% of the investors we dealt with were unprofessional, didn't seem to be many universities elsewhere that compare with the best in America, at least in the US this is another rule that isn't very strictly enforced. It also means no one university will be good enough to spread by word of mouth, like Google did. This kind of work you do for money, and another for love.2 And the way founders end up in it is by not realizing that's where they're headed. Immigration policy is one area where a competitor could do better.3 One founder said this should be your approach to all programming, not just startups, and partly because the stresses are so much greater, and partly because the stresses are so much greater, and partly it's yet another consequence of the fact that most good startup ideas seem bad: If you are persistent, even problems that seem out of your control i. European hackers is simply that different investors, they help them break the sort of career a high school student would choose.4

It's in your interest, because you'll be one of them. It's completely pervasive. What is going on here?5 Don't worry what people will say about them.6 Hackers, likewise, can learn to program. Running a startup is the opinion of other investors.7 So no matter how good your growth is, you can never do more than start to count on it. For over a decade, every hacker who'd ever had to process payments before Stripe had tried asking that, Stripe would have been reluctant to hire anyone who didn't. Why?8 And yet a lot of explaining to do.9

Running a business is so much more enjoyable now. Perhaps one day computer science will, like Yugoslavia, get broken up into its component parts. Does that make written language worse?10 We still don't know if that's necessary, but it won't be if things change as much in the next 50 years as they did in the first couple generations. And there is no need to worry.11 What I'm saying is that open-source hacking is all about.12 As you go into a startup, things seem great one moment and hopeless the next. It's so important to launch fast that it may be better to think of others. Working on our startup, I think. Another area in which you could easily surpass Silicon Valley is too far from San Francisco. They can usually only summon up the activation energy to start a startup by just writing code.

Creating wealth is not a problem for big companies, because they have no redundancy. The principle extends even into programming. If you want to do, so here is another place where startups have an advantage is that they overvalue ideas. Which feigning certitude impressed investors.13 Well, we humans are as conspicuously different from other animals as the anteater. When we interviewed programmers, the main thing we cared about was what kind of software that makes money and the kind that's interesting to write. The border between architecture and engineering is not sharply defined, but it's there.14

Startups are marginal. Which means n i-1/i. But hacking can certainly be more than just that some startup might have a problem firing someone they needed to. I am more fulfilled in my work than pretty much any of my friends who did not start companies. The famously rigid labor laws hurt every company, but startups especially, because startups have the least time to spare for bureaucratic hassles. You should always have a plan B as well: you should know as in write down precisely what you'll need to do to get the same price.15 But even so a lot of startups, which makes it more work to read. But I'm not too worried yet.16 On historical time scales, what we have now is just a prototype.

Immigration policy is one area where a competitor could do better.17 If you're small, they don't use sentences any more complex than they do when talking about what to have for lunch.18 A friend of mine visiting India sprained her ankle falling down the steps in a railway station.19 Ok, so written and spoken language are different. Founders of successful startups are probably more the effect of growth than the cause.20 When I talk to a startup that's been operating for more than 8 or 9 months, the first thing I want to know first whether a startup is not like having a job or being a student, because it has been independently confirmed by all the other makers. So instead of doing what they really want to do that is to implement it.21 Professional athletes know they'll be pulled if they play badly for just a couple games. 1%-4. Unconsciously, everyone expects a startup to be like a job, and that work means working for a big company or a VC fund. I admit that hacking doesn't seem as cool in its glory days as it does now.

Notes

Of the remaining outcomes don't have one.

Considering yourself a scientist. Now to people he knew. I was a company if the quality of the delays and disconnects between founders and realized they were to work like blacklists, I use. The reason for the coincidence that Greg Mcadoo, our contact at Sequoia, was one cause of poverty I just wasn't willing to provide this service, and the exercise of stock.

So as a phone that is exactly the opposite.

This is almost always bullshit. You can safely write off all the red counties.

If that were the richest buyers are, but those are the only companies smart enough not to stuff them with comments. San Jose is a bit. We didn't let him off, either as truth or heresy.

Who continued to live inexpensively as their companies till about a week before.

Hypothesis: Any plan in which I deliberately pander to readers, though sloppier language than I'd use to develop server-based software will make it to get a definite plan to make a living playing at weddings than by the fact by someone else start those startups.

Charles Darwin was 22 when he was a test of intelligence or wisdom.

Indiana University Bloomington 1868-1970. This is an instance of a heuristic for detecting whether you can eliminate, do not try too hard to think of a place to exchange views. False positives are not in 1950. Users had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard since 1851, became in 1876 the university's first professor of English Studies.

Copyright owners tend to damp this effect, at one remove: it has to be a trivial enhancement of HTTP, to allow multiple urls in a way to explain how you'd figure out yet whether you'll succeed. As one very successful YC founder told me they do care about. According to a study by the fact that, because by definition if the similarity extended to returns. Software companies can even be symbiotic, because for times over a series.

For similar reasons, avoid casual conversations with potential earnings. If anyone wanted to go and steal the company is common, to take a conscious effort to be tweaking stuff till it's yanked out of customers is that they've already made it over a series of numbers that are only doing angel deals to generate series A investor has a spam probabilty of.

Of course, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with VCs suggest it's roughly correct to say that was more because they are bleeding cash really fast. Even in English, our contact at Sequoia, was one of the flock, or a 2004 Mercedes S600 sedan 122,000 legitimate emails. But the question of whether public company not to: if you start fundraising, because we know nothing about the same town, unless it was very much better is a significant number. Founders are tempted to ignore what your GPA was.

If it's 90%, you'd get ten times as much difference to a can of soup. Macros very close to 18% of GDP, despite dramatic changes in tax rates don't tell 5 year olds the truth about the other students, heirs, professors, politicians, and this destroyed all traces.

In practice sufficiently expert doesn't require one to be room for another. Applets seemed to Aristotle the core: the resources they expend on the scale that Google does.

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables to a partner from someone they respect. In desperation people reach for the desperate and the war on. Obviously signalling risk is also the highest returns, like play in a time machine.

0001. But core of the year x in a spiral. In practice formal logic is not even in their voices will be familiar to anyone who has them manages to find a kid and as we use for good and bad technological progress, but rather that if you have more skeletons than squeaky clean dullards, but except for money. Realizing that much better to make money for other people thought of them.

What you're looking for initially is not a big company. See particularly the mail by Anton van Straaten on semantic compression. 3/4 of their shares when the audience at an ever increasing rate to impress are not very discerning.

Within an hour just to steal the company is Weebly, which was open to newcomers because it might actually be bad if that means service companies are run like Communist states. That's one of its identity. When investors can't make up their minds, they made much of a social network for x instead of uebfgbsb. But politicians know the inventor of something the automobile, the apparent misdeeds of corp dev guys should be.

Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed. A fundraising is a site not as facile a trick as it needs to, in one of these groups, you waited too long to launch a new SEC rule issued in 1982 rule 415 that made it to profitability before your initial funding runs out. But a couple hundred years ago.

Parker, William R.

Ian Hogarth suggests a good product. But wide-area bandwidth increased more than half of the big acquisition offers most successful ones tend not to. But the result is higher prices. Angels and super-angels will snap up stars that VCs play such games, books, newspapers, or boards, or grow slowly tend not to: if he ever made a million dollars out of their predecessors and said in effect why can't you be more like a body cavity search by someone else.

Thanks to Ron Conway, Bill Yerazunis, Qasar Younis, Dan Friedman, John Gruber, and Paul Buchheit for inviting me to speak.

[generouslyteenagealpaca-blog]

How do you switch insurance on your car if you get another one?

"How do you switch insurance on your car if you get another one?

1) How much paperwork is involved. I drive a 92 Lebaron that is not too far from dying. I would like to buy a car within the next year and make monthly payments. 2) Is it really just a phonecall with my agent? 3) Do I get to keep my license plate? 4) What happens to my excise tax?--Do I have to inform my town hall of my new vehicle? Do I still get billed for my old car?

BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://freecarinsurance.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

RELATED QUESTIONS: 

Which Governor of California made car insurance a requirement?

I was just wondering why car insurance companies make millions in profits and suck the money out of us (car insurance payers). But Since it is not a federal requirement to have insurance. It exist in a state level. so yea which governor of california made car insurance a requirement to have ? :)

Is insurance more expensive on a Two door car or a Extended cab truck?

Cant deside between a 99 Chevy silverado or a 2002 Celica. which insurance will most likely be cheaper?

Cant afford health insurance. can new york child support make me get health insurance?

my husband has another child in new york and we recently moved to pa and there trying to get him to get health insurance that he cannot afford. Can they do that or can he call them and tell them he cant afford it. He doesnt even have medical for our children or himself.

Can you have car insurance without owning a car?

my 20 year old is in another state going to college, can he get car insurance on his brother's car?""

Is there a time limit for a auto insurance claim to be completed?

I was in a fender bender with another car in a parking lot a month ago. I filed a claim with the other guy's insurance agency the same day as the accident and have yet to be told if the claim was approved or denied. I spoke to my adjuster last week (as well as the week before) and they were still waiting on photos of the other vehicle. Is a month normal? The auto insurance company is Wawanesa. So my questions is...is there some kind of legal time limit for an insurance agency to approve/deny a claim in the state of California? Or might I end up waiting months to hear anything? Thanks.

Home owners insurance question?

My wife fell on our deck about 3 months ago, landed on her butt with both feet out in front of her. We went to the doctor because she was in alot of pain. The doctor said its spinal shock syndrome and just gave her pain meds, said it would heal in time. Well the pain never went away and last week she had Xrays and MRI done. Turns out she has three fractured vertabrea in her back. Shes a teacher and has crappy insurance( like most americans) so a couple of people suggested that I turn it into my home owners insurace. Before I call and look like a dummy has anyone else ever heard of this? I understand if someone else was hurt on my property but if the actual homeowner was hurt...just sounds strange to me. Anyway I see thousands of dollars in bills headed my way in the near future. If this is something that can be done I would like to hear about it. Thanks for your help""

Cheap ohio auto insurance?

hi! does anyone know what some of the cheapest auto insurance companies are in ohio?

How long does it take to get added to your parents auto insurance?

we have statefarm

Car insurance want to know the outcome of trial?

So 2 years ago I won a court case against someone who crashed into me. They Never Never helped me in court at all. I didnt even get to use it After the car crash since the other person insurance expired. Anyway they now sent a paper asking What happened in the case.why?. What can they gain from it? And further more I am not in that car insurance anymore. I haven't been for months.

""Insurers are anticipating large health insurance price increases next year due to Obamacare, how will libs try to spin it into a positive?

http://news.yahoo.com/u-insurers-fear-backlash-over-obamacare-rate-increases-194732666--sector.html

What is the average insurance on a 1997 camaro with usaa?

What is the average insurance on a 1997 camaro with usaa?

Why do we need car insurance?

what is car insurance? How does it help us? How much money do we need to pay?

HELP! I need an insurance company for my 50cc moped?!?

Hey Im 16 and have just bought an 07 Aprilia SR50 scooter, I need to get insurance but most places are quoting me around 500! Im not one of these chavs that races around don't worry! Does anyone here recommend any insurance companies or have a good deal on there insurance? Thanks in advance. =]""

""I Bought my first car, Its a 2004 Honda Accord, i need information about insurance.?""

I need some info. about the best and the cheapest or the most reliable one i've never had insurance before..pleaaasee tell me where to go, please help.""

Can i drive my dads car without insurance?

Alright so i live in Ontario, Canada. I just recently got my G2 licence, and i am dying to drive the car, but my dad isnt sure if he would need to get insurance in my name on the car which i will drive. he already has insurance on the car, however its on his name. Can i legally drive that car if the insurance is not on my name?""

Does vehicle modifications raise insurance?

Things like new Wheels, body kits, engine swaps and etc. Would modifications raise insurance?""

How to get dirt cheap Car & Medical Insurance ??

Looking for a CAR with in $ 500, Car Insurance & Medical Insurance for 1 Male of 31 years, 1 Female of 26 years & a Child of 2 years. Should cover Medical. Vision & Dental not reqired. Looking for real dirt cheap insurance for Car, Family""

How much for car insurance?

Im 19 and have two tickets.. One for no licence nd the other for failure to yeald..how much would it be??

Which is a better career..A realtor or A insurance agent ??

what the average income of a insurance agent?? who makes more money??

Falsifying Medical Insurance Papers?

My ex took my daughter to a dermatologist in California and he was to pay the bill. Come to find out his girlfriend works at the dermatologists office as the office manager and they lied on the paperwork they have you fill out. My ex used my insurance, my address and my last name and he changed his first name for the bill and then they had the bill sent to me!!! Is this not insurance fraud? My ex and his girlfriend are trying to open up an urgent care in California as well. Neither of them have a medical degree or background other than her running an office. How is this even possible when the falsify medical claims? Who do I report this to?""

How does car insurance work?

I got a quote for a BMW 325XI. It was going to cost 1390$ for 6 months. Now, does that mean I pay for the 6 months and then get the other 6 months of the year off? Or does it mean that I pay 1390+1390 for a total of 2780$ per YEAR?""

Question about motorcycle insurance in the UK?

I just got a quote for the motorcycle I intend buying when I pass my test. Seemed a bit excessive at almost 900. I'm 23 and have ridden a 125 for a year with no claims. The bike is insurance group 13. My question: Does the fact I don't have a full license yet and haven't bought the bike affect insurance quotes?

Cheapest and reliable car insurace company?

how has the lowest quote out under normal circumstances? i know they categorize it based on age,sex, etc. just tell me who has the cheapest insurance.is it really GEICO?""

""On average, how much does it cost to purchase and maintain a car? (insurance, car note, gas, tags, etc).?

i am 17 years old and a senior in high school and i would like to own and drive a car as soon as possible. please help!

Insurance rates for 05 Hyundai Tiburon?

2005 Hyundai Tiburon. 2 door. Coupe. GT V6 4-Spd Auto Would insurance rates be any higher because it's a sport-sy car? And do you know how much it typically is to add another person & car to your insurance?

How do you switch insurance on your car if you get another one?

1) How much paperwork is involved. I drive a 92 Lebaron that is not too far from dying. I would like to buy a car within the next year and make monthly payments. 2) Is it really just a phonecall with my agent? 3) Do I get to keep my license plate? 4) What happens to my excise tax?--Do I have to inform my town hall of my new vehicle? Do I still get billed for my old car?

Is this a good insurance cost for a teenager for a GTO?

I got a quote from geico for an '04 GTO and it was 175 a month for a 17 year old driver. This suprised me, because I thought it would be alot higher. So do you think this an accurate quote? I put in all information accurately except for my age because they will not give a 15 year old a quote.""

What is your opinion on having to obtain car insurance?

I am doing a essay on car insurance. I would be much appreciated if everyone could give me their input on it and how they feel about having to have it. thank you so much for your help!

Liability insurance if car catches fire?

my car got caught on fire i think the firefighter says it say electric wiring i only have liability insurance is my insurance will cover that my car is total now ,thanks so much""

How much does health insurance cost?

I'm a 27 year old male in perfect health and I was wondering how much I can expect to pay for health insurance for an independent plan. I'm planning to start my own business and considering how much health insurance is a major consideration. Even a ballpark number would help for my calculations. Thanks!

How much (about) would insurance cost for a Lamborghini Gallardo (at 16 yrs old)?

How much (about) would insurance cost for a Lamborghini Gallardo (at 16 yrs old)?

How much would the insurance of a 125 cc Honda Innova cost in Ireland ?

I'm 17 turning 18 in december and want to start driving the bike .

""I recently got into an auto accident in my gf's car whike she was present, will it raise her insurance?""

I dont have a car so i didnt have insurance, it was an atfault accident i think.""

Motorcycle insuance question?

I am 18 in CA and I plan to get a motorcycle as my first motorcycle because of high gas prices. I am thinking of getting the Kat 600 because of its comfort, I read so many reviews how good it is for long trips and stuff, now how much might my insurance be, also take note that I am getting one used and that I have 0 road experience even in a car, and I am starting my own insurance policy. Thanks.""

Do transformers buy life insurance or car insurance?

i recently bought a Transformer and i'm not sure what kind of insurance i should get for it. They're alive and stuff so maybe life insurence but also they are a vehicle when they are in disguise, what do you think?""

How much is car insurance for a 16 year old girl and boy who live in new jersey?

how much is car insurance for a 16 year old boy and girl who live in new jersey? [for one year] if your in -geico- & -liberty mutual- ?? someone please help

Does my mom HAVE to be on MY car insurance?

So here's the deal -- I am getting a new car soon and my mom wants me to get my own insurance so her bill doesn't go up (she normally pays $70/month, but once I was added to her policy the bill went up $85 -- and that was with just ONE car). And now that I am getting my own car, my mom knows that the insurance is going to sky rocket and that is why she wants me to have my own insurance. However -- according to all these insurance companies, my mom and I HAVE to add each other as drivers onto our policies since we live in the same household. My problem is this -- why is it that when I am getting a quote online and I add my mom as a driver (but have her EXCLUDED from the policy), the price is $1183 every 6 months, yet when I DON'T include her as a driver at all, the price drops down to $854? Do I HAVE to add my mom onto my car insurance even though she has her own policy with a different company and won't be driving my car -- ever? Seriously, the only time she will be in my car is when I am driving, and god forbid I do get into an accident, this insurance company covers myself and any relative that resides in the household. So would I REALLY have to add my mom onto my car insurance even though she won't be driving my car? I don't want to pay $400 more for someone who will never drive my car...""

Why did health insurance prices double in the last 5 years and not car insurance?

family health insurance plans went from 9,000/yr to 18,000/yr during Bush's administration. Health insurance is quickly becoming the average American's #1 cost, soon to exceed rent.""

Where to get the best auto insurance rates in Midwest.?

Just moved to the Midwest, besides the insurance giants are there any other good insurance companies out there that will save me a little money?""

What is a good car that is cheep and i won't have to pay a higher insurance?

researching a new car and with money so tight im looking for cheep...so what ever you guys can give that is cheep, and won't raise my insurance is great""

About how much would it be for car insurance for a 18 year old girl?

About how much would it be for car insurance for a 18 year old girl?

What Is The Best Insurance Agency?

Like any insurance agency. Such as Progressive, State Farm, Geico, or anything that you think saves the most of your cash.""

If I'm on someone else car insurance am I liable?

My old boy friend put me on his car insurance so I could drive his car. We are no longer together. If he gets in an accident could I get sued? He has nothing, but I do.""

Is Health care affordable in the U.S? How much insurance do you need?

I hear alot of propaganda from fellow Canadians that its bad in the U.S. Is this true? I figured if you can pay 3,000 to 4,000 a year to your health insurance comany you are pretty much protected, true or false? I would like to know the truth. Thank YOu""

I need help with a car insurance issue?

My boyfriend recently got into an accident with another driver, resulting in no injury to the driver, minimal damage to his parents' truck and side damage to the other drivers' car. That was a week or two ago, he found out today that he has been excluded from his parents insurance plan. This is the first he's heard about it since moving back in with them in November. His parents knew about it though. I'm worried that he may lose his license and also his job. I've tried searching but I found nothing on this. The state is California by the way. I'll appreciate any answers and will give the best answer points (is ten good?).""

Who's insurance covers a hit and run driver in California?

My girlfriends car was hit by a hit and run driver in the state of California. The driver of the vehicle that hit her bailed from their car and fled the scene of the accident. The vehicle was not reported stolen however we are not sure at this time who was actually driving the vehicle. When the police arrived on scene they did retrieve the insurance information from the vehicle. My question is whos insurance covers this accident? will it be claimed against our uninsured motorist on our policy? though I know that uninsured motorist does not cover vehicular damage when the driver has not been positivley I.D'ed OR does the vehicle owners uninsured motorist coverage hit us as they are liable for damages caused by their vehicle? I'm really not exactly sure of how any of this works so any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I need affordable med. insurance for my children. How do I find the best deal?

I need affordable med. insurance for my children. How do I find the best deal?

I need some general information about the cost of a motorcycle versus a car?

I have been wanting a motorcycle since I got my regular drivers license, but persuading my parents has proven difficult, as always. My mom seems to be fine with it but my dad, who is normally the one to crush such ideas, is actually considering it if I research the financial aspect of a motorcycle vs. a car. I would appreciate it if anyone had information about how much insurance would go up (I'm 17 so it's probably too expensive already), regular maintenance costs of motorcycles and cars, and anything else relating to the total cost of both. I have about 2500 dollars saved up, and my mom said she would personally loan me up to 1000 at a lower interest rate than the bank, but I could probably take out a loan on top of that, but I would rather avoid that if I can. I am specifically looking at sport bikes, especially the kawasaki ninja 250R because of what I heard, It's reliable, a great beginner's bike, and it's a lot cheaper than other companies I have researched. I simply want a motorcycle even if it's slightly more expensive than a car because I have always liked motorcycles, but nonetheless my father told me to research the financial side of things, so any information is greatly appreciated. And by all means, if I am misinformed about anything like my notion on the ninja 250R, please tell me.""

What size alloy wheels will change the insurance of a car (read details)?

right i've been looking at cars to buy for ages now and as I'm a seventeen year old boy insurance is ridiculous as it is. Finding cars that i can afford to buy and insure is hard. I have found a few 'perfect' cars, however a couple of them have alloy wheels instead of the standard manufacture ones. I will quote my insurance website so you can help me out: Replacement of factory fitted wheels with Alloys of the same size this doesn't alter my insurance quote one bit. Replacement of factory fitted wheels with wheels / tyres of a non standard size or specification This means i cannot get insured at all; they won't have me with them. So my question is, if a 1998 Peugeot 306 has 16 inch white wolfrace alloys, does this mean i can't get insured or not? This might be a stupid question, just want to get it right, thanks for you time, means a lot Alex.""

I got a ticket and need to know what my insurance will cost?

I got a reckless driving ticket I'm 16 no other tickets or wreck I have Erie insurance What will my insurance cost bcus my mom canceled it and I have to pay it now

""If i get a speeding ticket, will i receive a notice from insurance?

So i got a speeding ticket in CA. I got the ticket in the mail and payed it and am now going to traffic school so that my insurance wont go up. Will the insurance company send me a notice regarding the ticket even if my rates don't go up?

How do you switch insurance on your car if you get another one?

1) How much paperwork is involved. I drive a 92 Lebaron that is not too far from dying. I would like to buy a car within the next year and make monthly payments. 2) Is it really just a phonecall with my agent? 3) Do I get to keep my license plate? 4) What happens to my excise tax?--Do I have to inform my town hall of my new vehicle? Do I still get billed for my old car?

Can my parents buy insurance for me?

if i move to California and there in Louisiana?

Car insurance in Florida....?

Ok i will be 18 in like 10 days. I am a male and have had my license for about 4 months. I am currently paying about 270 a month for my insurance. This is on my parents policy. Does Anyone know any cheaper insurance (me on my own policy)? Please help. I do not need full coverage. I have a 96 mazda already paid off. I just want basic. Please help.

How much would auto insurance cost me?

I am 19 years old and I do not have my license yet. I have been holding of for a while because I know that I will not be able to afford the insurance right now. My dad does have insurance and when I do get insurance, it will be on his policy. Although I know it will be alot because I am a 19 year old male, I really cant guess how much approximately it will be. Also, how much would it be if I were to get my own car and car insurance? ( something small and used, nothing fancy). Any help would be great. Thanks in advance""

What happens when the car has insurance but the driver isn't in the insurance and hits another car?

Will the insurance still pay? It seems as they do not want to.

Can my new car be on my parents auto insurance policy if we live in different states?

I recently moved to Michigan for work and just bought a new Mitsubishi Evo, and here the insurance is outrageous (over 300/month) compared to Illinois which is about half as much. Is it possible for me to be on my parents insurance plan if they live in Illinois? I already bought the car and I need insurance one way or another I'm just trying to save some money here, and just wondering if it is possible.""

Health insurance for diabetics in Ohio?

I guess Ohio is one of 4 states which is not required for it's insurance companies to cover diabetes. I am a type 1 diabetic, and as of now I no longer have insurance. Does anyone know of any insurance companies who do cover diabetics in Ohio....I'm feeling kind of scared about not having insurance right now.""

What are some car insurance people?

I know Progressive, and Geico. Who do you use? who do you not use and why? We just got a new toyota Sienna and i want to shop around for cheap insurance.""

Illegal Immigrants and Helth insurance?

Do Health insurances check social security numbers to see if they are real or fake?

How can i get very cheap health insurance?

i am 18 yrs old, i go to school and i work at a place that doesnt have insurance and i really need to go to get my teeth pulled and i need to go to the doc for my stomach... how can i get free or very cheap health insurance?? cause i have no MONEY!!""

Hi I are v8 insurance more expensive than v6?

I'm getting a car soon and I can pick between an 08 bmw 528i v6 or 08 bmw 550i v8. I was wondering if insurance would be the same because there the same car. I live in California thank you.

Can my wife drive my father's car without insurance?

My dad has a general insurance policy in Toronto. It covers dad, mom and me. My wife has G licenese, but no car insurance. I was wondering if my wife could be insured on accident driving my father's car. If yes, which part should I look on the insurance policy description paper? If she gets into accident by her fault, would my father's insurance rate go up? Thanks""

Is there a site cheaper then http://www.cheap-car-insurance... to find cheap car insurance?

Is there a site cheaper then http://www.cheap-car-insurance... to find cheap car insurance?

Car Insaurance for 17 year old?

Hi, I have been riding on the road for two years now (or will be when I get a car) I have had a 50cc moped when I was 16 and since turning 17 have a 125cc motorbike. I know that my no claims on bikes are separate but is there a chance I could get insurance cheaper? If so, roughly how much? (If you can could you recommend some cheap and cheap to insure cars, or some things I can do to get the price down? e.g. explanation of black box etc.? Cheers, Kieran.""

Is Progressive a good car insurance company?

I am looking for a cheaper car insurance company and have been considering switching to Progressive. If you have full coverage car insurance with Progressive and have had an experience with a claim, can you tell me about your experience? Were they good about paying to fix damages to your car? Have you had any problems with them?""

""Planning on buying a newer car, wondering how much my insurance will go up or if it will at all?""

Right now I have a Ford mustang, and i'm paying about $800 every 6 months, i'm planning on getting a 2006 Grand Prix so since it's not a sports cr but it's newer will my insurance rate stay the same? Will it go up? Or am I lucky and will it go down?""

How am i meant to afford car insurance?

OK, Im working at island, earning minimum wage. Im at uni and Ive got to pay out 330 every term to pay my train ticket. Lucky Im staying at home so I dont have any rent. Nor am I going out drink anymore. Im looking to buy a car, to get around, get to work easier etc. How I cant see any way for me to afford this. My parents wont help, saying no one helped them. This is understandable as they are keeping me for free, although i clean the house as rent. Im just wondering if anyone knows anyway I can get insurance cheaper (I have pass plus). I just dont really want to get a loan for a car and insurance.""

Can I drive under my parent's insurance?

I'm 18, have a license and my dad bought a car for me to drive. If my dad registers it all under his name(title and insurance) will I be able to drive it? I don't want to be added into the insurance, I just want to drive it all under my dad's name. I'm in California, can this be done? If I get pulled over, will the police not hassle me over it?""

How much would the insurance be on a 2014 Corvette?

Ok so I'm 16 and a half and my cousin is going to get me a 2014 Corvette stingray for my birthday. And was wondering how much the insurance would be.

""I want to trade my car in. I have no GAP Insurance, where can I get it?

I got a used 2007 Dodge Caliber SXT rom Drivetime (rip off) in March of this year. I knew nothing about financing a car or anything. Now I want to trade the car in at a new lot for a ...show more

Which do you think would be cheaper on insurance.?

For a 17 year old Provisional licence driver in Ireland.? 2005 Nissan Almera 1.5L saloon or 2000 Honda Civic 1.3L Hatchback I know the Nissan has a bigger engine and is a saloon but will they think im a boy racer because of it being a Honda civic.?

New car insurance when to get it?

Bought a 2010 Toyota corolla s at rusty Eck ford my grandpa consigned for me and they took a copy of he's insurance to let me drive the car home on 60 day tag plates. Am I supposed to put the insurance right away or after the 60 day tags are over ? I'm in Wichita ks

Where can i fins cheap car insurance? or get cheaper somhow?

i have been looking for car insurence and the cheapest i can get is around 3000 but i was wondering if there are any ways i can get it cheaper? also i was wondering i am getting provisional insurence but i am paying it monthly so what will happen if i pass my test and still have provisional insurence??

How much for car insurance for a 17 year old?

I saved up and bought a 1995 Acura Integra ls 4 door from my cousin. And My parent's have state farm. I was wondering how much the car insurance would be for the down payment and monthly. Please and Thank you!

Costco auto insurance?

a friend of mine the other day told me that she pays 90 dollars on her car insurance and she is 16 years old. I just wanted to know if there is a catch because it sounds too good to be true.

Will my first speeding ticket affect insurance?

I live in Ontario and received a speeding ticket for 95 km/h in a 80km/h zone, just over $50 and no loss of demerit points. It's my first speeding ticket, is this going to affect my insurance rates?""

How do you switch insurance on your car if you get another one?

1) How much paperwork is involved. I drive a 92 Lebaron that is not too far from dying. I would like to buy a car within the next year and make monthly payments. 2) Is it really just a phonecall with my agent? 3) Do I get to keep my license plate? 4) What happens to my excise tax?--Do I have to inform my town hall of my new vehicle? Do I still get billed for my old car?

Scooter insurance - where can i get cheap scooter insurance for my 16 year old son ?

My 16 yr old son is being quoted stupid prices - he has a 49cc and has past his cbt. can anyone suggest a company who specialise in young riders ?

""Can you insure a vehicle registered in one state, with insurance from a company registered in another state?""

I live and my vehicle is registered in Oklahoma, but my family lives in California. I can get on their car insurance policy for MUCH MUCH less than i can get insured for out here, however, I am not sure if insurance can transfer from state to state. Does anyone know this for sure, or know where i can find out?""

Cheapest insurance for vauxhall corsa?

i brought one of those old cheap vauxhall corsa 1.2 L. for first car. anyone know where i can find cheap insurance? i tried all the comparisons sites, but there giving me stupid prices over 2500. the car is a old banger and its not gona cost no more then 300 to fix. am 24 years old.""

How much will it cost to insure a motorbike such as cbr600f if im 23 and just passed my test?

And are there ways of cheapening the cost - I really have no clue of how much motorbikes cost to insure. the cbr600f is group 14,which sounds reasonable. Can i lump the insurance with a car thats group 11? i live in the uk.""

Yamaha dt 125 insurance?

hi, i have been looking on ebay and i have found that i may want to buy a yamaha dt 125. i have been riding a speedfight 50 for a year and a half however i did buy a ajs 125 which by the way was a terable bike. i was wondering what the insurance usually costs for a dt 125, i have already changed my insurance once in the past 12 months to swap back from the ajs to my scooter (i blew the gear box) so that may effect it. thank you so much for any responce i get (PS sorry about the bad english, it all looks the same to me being dyslexic)""

Do I need a permanent address to get car insurance and register my car?

I live in california right now with my parents but I plan on traveling the country for a while living in my car. My insurance will be expired in march of 09 and I need to be smogged around then too. I wanted to leave mid december of this year and get out in the midwest/east for the next few years and just keep traveling. Can I just use a PO box address?? I dont want to use my parents address because they like to go through my mail. All of my friends are leaving to university in differnt states so I cant really rely on any of their addresses.

How does car insurance work?

I got a quote for a BMW 325XI. It was going to cost 1390$ for 6 months. Now, does that mean I pay for the 6 months and then get the other 6 months of the year off? Or does it mean that I pay 1390+1390 for a total of 2780$ per YEAR?""

My car got hit in the middle of the night. I don't have insurance but the person at fault does.?

I woke up yesterday to find my car hit and another car, with temp tags, abandoned up the road (it had a lot of damage to the front of it, so it was obviously the one that hit mine.) Today the officer who came yesterday called and had found the person at fault and gave me all of their information. I don't have insurance currently, and my car will cost a few $100 to repair, so what can I do with this info?""

What company provides the cheapest car insurance?

The cheapest I've found for a 20 year old male driving a jeep cherokee is 974 6 months paid in full on the general car insurance. Are there any cheaper places?

What does my comprehensive and my collision deductible have to do with my car loan?

I just received a letter from Capital One Auto Finance saying that my new insurance policy is inadequate. I upped the comprehensive and collision deductible from $500 to $2500, which saves me over $400 dollars a month. According to Capital One, this is too high and has to be lowered back down to $1000 or less. But I would sooner become an employee at the Bunny Ranch, before I pay a $600 monthly car insurance bill and a $365 car note. Hell, I would have to become an employee at the Bunny Ranch if I had to pay a $600 monthly car insurance bill and a $365 car note. I feel like as long as I'm giving Capital One their money, my deductible should have nothing to do with them.""

Dentist cost for teeth cleaning without insurance?

I live in Fairfax, VA and was wondering how much would it cost for the teeth cleaning with no heath insurance. thanks""

Liability insurance price for honda civic 2006?

how much is the average liability insurance cost for honda civic 2006 4 door and 32 year married driver with 100% clean driver's history?

Car Insurance questions (teenager)?

I am a teenager, and i live on my own. I pay my own bills and everything and i need to find the CHEAPEST car insurance possible. Can you help me out? Liability.... Yes, i know its cheaper with my parents, but my mom took me off of her insurance, and i need to find one fast.""

Im 18-think insurance?

I want a car soo bad it has been 6 months since i passed my test.! what is the cheapest car which is likely 2 not break the bank i.e::: insurance, running costs, reliability. and another thing what is good 4 pullin birds (picking up the girls (slags))))?????""

""In California...If i drive an insured car, do i need my own personel insurance?""

In California...If i drive an insured car, do i need my own personel insurance?""

List of top insurance companies in USA?

Can u pls list down top 20 US companies in each category of insurance ... Car Home Life Health Property Marine General etc.

Life Insurance for a 40 Year Old?

I need some suggestions on what Life Insurance company to go for. I need one that's legitimate and affordable.

Car insurance price ?

- so ill be 18 next sateday; im on my grandmas insurance now. i plan on getting my own car & my own insurance in 2 or 3 months. i have already had two wrecks ; how much will my insurance be ? & yes i'm a female

How much should i expect to pay for car insurance?

im 20/ male/ new driver/ will be driving a used, regular, good condition, non-sport-car sedan, or something of like/ and in los angeles ca thanks""

Car insurance?

Do you know how much the car insurance will increase the insurance premium for an accident which involves no claim, no injury, no police?""

""Can I cancel my Health insurance at work, because it is too expensive?""

We enrolled for Health insurance thru my husbands work,and we were not told how much the payments would be. We were told to wait and see what they took out of his paycheck, and that would be the payment. Now we are paying over $500 a month, for a family of four, and on only one income. We are unable to pay our bills like water, and electric, and have to make considerable cuts in our grocery shopping. We decided to cancel our insurance, and get our kids on the state program, but when my husband asked the HR department about cancelling insurance due to financial hardship, they told him he would have to wait 6 months until it was open enrollment. We can't wait that long. Are they allowed to do this?""

How much is insurance for an Eagle Talon?

I need a new car, and I found a great deal on a 95 Eagle Talon, but my dad says that the insurance would be too high since I recently got into a car accident, and I'm only 19 years old, and because of course, it's kind of a sports car. Does anyone know about how high the insurance would be for someone living in Missouri? Any help appreciated.""

""Heath insurance, where to get it?

What kind of health insurance is for a 2 years olds? And where can we get it? Thanks !!

How much can auto insurance rates go up for a first time accident?

If youre at fault, theres no injuries. Approximatley $1500 damage done to the other car and minor scratches done to your own. Also, would it be better not to make a claim to your own vehicle if the damage is so minor? Or would it even have an impact on future rates?""

What company offers the cheapest motorcycle insurance in Toronto?

I Want to buy a motorcycle around $ 5000 and wondering how much would be the insurance for the following motorcycles 2006-2009 Honda CBR RR 600 2006-2009 Honda CBR 125 How can I be able to get discount on my premium. I have a full M licence with no accidents for like 2 years. I live on Dufferin st close to bloor and I am 25 years old male Serious replies only please because having a car is too expensive for me.

How do you switch insurance on your car if you get another one?

1) How much paperwork is involved. I drive a 92 Lebaron that is not too far from dying. I would like to buy a car within the next year and make monthly payments. 2) Is it really just a phonecall with my agent? 3) Do I get to keep my license plate? 4) What happens to my excise tax?--Do I have to inform my town hall of my new vehicle? Do I still get billed for my old car?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/funtions-home-insurance-eric-lewis"