Grrl Power #697 – Space high
See, the Hack Buddy incident started off as Cora actually wanting to be able dance better, but due to a series of humorous misunderstandings, the controller wound up in the wrong hands, and there was a big long line to dance with Cora, and everyone had to take a number like in a deli.
No one will ever accuse me of being a visionary futurist, because my idea of Space High School is exactly the same as a modern Earth high school with lockers and obnoxious cliquish cheerleaders and all that. If I actually gave it more though than just the minimum required to establish a setting for a gag, then instead of lockers, they might all have pocket transporters, and instead of books or tablets, they’d have holographic screens that pop up and have transparent backgrounds because that looks futuristic but in reality seems like it would be really obnoxious to work and try and read on.
Someone asked why, if Cora lives in an advanced society, why they couldn’t just clone her new limbs, and the truth is someone probably could. That technology existed on her world, but, Cora grew up relatively poor, and whatever world she lived on had an American approach to healthcare, where only wealthy people can avail themselves of elective procedures, and everyone else can fuck off. Instead she was issued a clunky, basic model prosthesis frame, and it barely worked most of the time and kept breaking down. The wait to get it fixed was usually unacceptably long, so instead of scraping along with one working leg or trying to get dressed with one hand locked into a fist, Cora started fixing it up herself. This started her down the path of engineering, computer programming, and later, physical sciences and applied carnage.
She could easily get new limbs cloned and surgically attached now, but her artificial limbs are a considerable boon to her adventuring career, and she has full tactile sensation through them. They even self heat so when she touches someone else it doesn’t feel like she’s just pressed a cold spoon to their neck.
BTW, I know “quadriplegic” isn’t really the correct term to describe Cora’s condition. I thought quadriplegic meant either paralyzed of missing, and I think some people use it interchangeably, but a dictionary definition of the word simply refers to paralysis. “Amelia” is the absence of one or more limbs. I don’t know if “quadrameliac” is a real word. Apodal is a more accurate description, but I guess just saying “limbless” would work as well. Maybe I should go change it on the previous page for clarity.
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That comment in the last frame about metal and maglevs now has me wondering about the Chinese maglev in Shanghai between downtown and the airport. Obviously a maglev has to generate an enormous magnetic field to lift the cars off of the pathway. So is the field large enough to affect any metal that people riding inside are carrying? Getting stabbed in the chest by the ball-point pen you’re carrying in your shirt pocket would seem to be A Really Bad Thing (TM).
Magnetic fields fall off quickly over distance, and need to be comparatively small to overcome gravity (by which I mean you don’t need a field the size of the planet to balance the gravity of the planet). On top of that, there are ways to build electromagnets that greatly reduce the magnetic field on one side of them. Some numbers I found for Germany’s proposed maglev 15 years ago said the magnetic field in the massenger compartment would be about 100 microTesla, which is double the natural magnetic field of the Earth. Between the train and the track would be 50 milliTesla. For comparison a hospital MRI can be anywhere from 0.2 T (200mT) to 3T.
The trick is that when you compress the field it gets much stronger. Magnets that pull at a few pounds from about 2 inches, will push at more than 50 before contact (estimated from childhood memory).
Magnetic impellers with a warning attached.
Probably not a standard maglev. I could see it being a magnetohydrodynamic drive, 3.5 Tesla will get a decent sized vehicle up to 8 knots in open seawater (see: the Yamato-1) using a magnetic field comparable to an MRI.
A more advanced society could probably manage better magnets, and may have saltier water (better conductor – better propulsion)
Xerxes Aragon “has me wondering about the Chinese maglev ”
Dont worry about it. you can set up magnets to only have a field on one side. Its called a Halbach array and it strengthens the magnet on one side while almost entirely canceling out on the other side. Also, magnetic fields lose strength with the square of the distance, so even if it is strong enough to hold up a train from 1 cm away, it can be week enough to be safe from 1 meter away as that would be (100*100) times weaker or 10,000 times weaker.
Things that you can do are not always things that you do do. You could, for example, use superconductors to trap the magnetic fields, but then you need to be using superconductors, which have their own costs and limitations (including how much of a magnetic field they can block), on what might not be premium equipment.
And humor.
Oh, and Halbach arrays, while possible, use arrays of permanent magnets. It may be difficult to use them in technologies that call for single electromagnets. Sure, you could probably make an electromagnet version of a Halbach array … but it still counts as an array of magnets.
But humor.
No, metal wasn’t affected by the train in any way. Been there.
I’m trying to imagine the thought process and inner world of someone who thinks it’s funny to bully a disabled person by exploiting their disability to render them helpless. I’m not coming up with anything that’s compatible with any kind of person I would ever want to talk to or associate with.
Also that metal girl in the last panel just became my favourite, and I demand a spin-off comic.
I‘ve met quite a few people who would bully the disabled, actually.
I’d love to associate with them. Prepare food for them by leaving raw chicken out for a few days to .. age. Smear dog poo on their car windshield and door handles. Put out a bowl of mixed m&ms, skittles, and Reese’s pieces for them…
It is unfortunately an easy mentality to fall into, if kids are not raised properly. ‘This person is inferior to me, therefore they can entertain me however I please.’ What kids fail to realize in the small setting of a classroom or school, is that the world is a biiiig place. There will always be someone faster, smarter, stronger, more agile, etc. and some of those bettee abled have no compunction against bullying bullies.
Okay, salmonella and dog poo is one thing but a bowl of mixed mixed M&Ms, skittles, and Reese’s Pieces? That’s just evil.
Apparently I’m the only person who went to a school where disabled people didn’t get horribly bullied. Either that, or I was VERY ignorant of it happening.
Nah, I’m fortunately in the same boat. Granted, there were rather few kids with visible disabilities at the schools I went to. But at one school, there was a girl who I think had cerebral palsy, and I never saw anybody bullying her, and I seem to remember she had friends, including a girl who would push her wheelchair when she used it. And when we got our yearbooks, everyone wanted her signature because it was so pretty. At another school there was a kid, don’t really know what he had, but he had a special desk and a computer for class. Mostly people were just interested in his desk and his computer, and his ability to turn his hands around and stand on them in a seated position.
There was only one disabled person in my high school, a girl who was blind. I don’t recall her ever being bullied. I do recall people who sat near her during lunch trying to keep her involved in the conversations.
On the other hand, there was a whole lot of your garden variety bullying of the smaller kids by the bigger kids going on.
In re: bullying, and the ideas for “associating” with bullies in the methods Torrenal suggested.
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
And the abyss is filled with mixed M&Ms, Skittles and Reece’s Pieces.
An abyss filled with candy! How do I dive in?
Anybody want the Reece’s Pieces?
At my High School, there were three types of ‘Differently abled’. 1:The ones on a different education track, who had all their classes together and were mostly isolated from the rest of the school. 2: The ones whose Individual Education Plans mandated they have a smaller, more intimate Study Hall so the teachers could get one-on-one time to make sure the kids were keeping up, and in my case, so the intelligent but lazy(e.g. me) could provide same-age tutoring while the teacher moonlighted as a coder to pay his bills. 3: The kids with physical disabilities who you DID NOT FUCK WITH, as they either A: could run you down and OVER in their wheelchair even if you stole the battery pack or B: had a multi-foot reach advantage if you didn’t steal both crutches, or C: you’d get your ass beat by the kid who threw a 300lb(135kg) linebacker 8 feet(2.4m) once C caught up with you after school.
Nori: That’s Boo from The Mighty Orbots, an old cartoon series. From what I’ve seen the series is on youtube now, so you might want to check it out. ;)
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who remembers Mighty Orbots!
I remember watching it on TV back in the early 80s.
Was disappointed when it only had one season.
I’m both disappointed that she’s not a Grrl Power character, and excited that I can see more of her! Thanks!
Good news! Go to pretty much any American middle or high school and you can find dozens, if not hundreds of these bipedal turds.
Correction: go to pretty much any Western place of education (don’t limit it to just the US, or middle or high school)
In fact, don’t just limit it to places of education
Correction: Any place of education.
I don’t know why the assumption is that things are somehow worse in the West than elsewhere. We have our problems, but do some travelling and you’ll return thinking that the West is a literal paradise of tolerance, respect and decency.
Don’t have any experience of Eastern places
It was not meant to be a pissing contest of who has it worse
NoriMori
.
Even if this is a low-budget suit, why on
EarthZolton wouldn’t she be wearing a jacket or something to cover the spine?!Our high school regional competitions included several kids with visible prosthetics, and everyone was pretty cool about treating it normally (or even helping the… prosthetee? play amputation-themed pranks on others), but they still chose to cover and appear as normal as possible most of the time.
Perhaps it needs access to air to cool or pump air into a pneumatic drive system for the “muscles” of the suit.
what she is wearing seems to be some kind of uniform, maybe there is no jackets allowed. What is the more interesting question, how did she dress in it with it under her limb suit?
She still had parents, and whether she put the suit on before or after getting dressed, she would still need help putting it on
Well, with sufficiently advanced robotics, I could see the exo-suit unit to be controlled by voice/whistling etc.; to allow Cora to control it herself as well. Maybe a implanted bio-powered signal control system.
If it was that advanced, she wouldn’t be at risk of battery theft
Or actuated by your own nerves is possible now. Without implanting them.
“‘Amelia’ is the absence of one or more limbs. I don’t know if “quadrameliac” is a real word.”
I don’t know either, but a quick Wikipedia search reveals that “tetra-amelia” is a real word.
“Apodal is a more accurate description …”
Why? That means lacking feet. She lacks all four limbs, not just her feet.
“… but I guess just saying ‘limbless’ would work as well.”
It would, though “without limbs” would work better with the sentence. i.e. “I was born without limbs” works better than “I was born limbless.”
The only problem with ‘limbless’ is that it’s very close to ‘legless’ – a term for drunk.
Anyway, thanks, Dave, for acknowledging my comment about ‘amelia’ on the previous page. I feel heard (even if you learned about it from some other pedant).
Never heard of “legless” being used as a colloquialism for drunk. What region is that from?
The UK or one of its farflung colonies in the deep south (pacific)
I like quadriplegic for Cora – doctors have at times made a thing of cutting off ‘unnecessary’ bits.
‘Hum, this infant has extra toes/is a conjoined twin/isn’t exactly a boy or a girl – that’s no way to live a life. I have a knife – problem solved.’
In a world with stock gizmos to replace the limbs of amputees, lopping off unusable limbs in favor of equipping such parts makes a sort of sense. Not saying I agree, but i live in a world where doctors will remove digit #6 from a hand as a matter of course – something that would not hinder the kid at all, apart from teasing (and possibly make identifying the ring finger a little difficult).
Congenital amputation by the way, is a thing, and is not something doctors do. If you stick with limbless at birth, that might be a way to describe it.
course, the worst kinds of those guys are the ones with an obsession to make the unique person “normal” rather than anything actually messing with their health. There’s an entire family in Brazil with six fingers and six toes on each limb that work just fine, but if they’d been born in the US, you can bet your ass they would’ve just lopped them off.
Probably the most infuriating is Gender Reassignment Surgery, since invariably… it’s assigning the infant to be female because…. and this is pretty goddamned sickening… “it’s easier to dig a hole.” Which, btw, has been done when a surgeon fucks up a circumcision before. on numerous occasions.
I just thank god when and where I was born they had to have the permission of both parents to even try anything like that… and that my Dad said no.
Or even bits that are just culturally unaccepted. Male children in the US are almost always circumcised just as a matter of course. It’s been a very long while since I’ve bothered to discuss this with any medical professionals, and the only nurse amongst my friends has transitioned from hospitals to home care work so she’s been out of the loop for many years also. But I think the practice still continues today. If you don’t want your male child to be circumcised you’d probably better mention it up front and many times in order to avoid the automatic processing of that bit of surgery.
Isn’t that just a Jewish thing? o_O
Nope. In America it’s practiced as a matter of course for ‘health reasons’ largely invented by John Kellogg and popularized in the first half of the 20th century. Basically is cruel, painful, and worst – profitable.
Same with Canada. Both of mine were.
Am I the only one who noticed that the mean girl from the last panel appears to be the smirking girl from the first panel? The beige one with the ear folds?
I too assume that it’s more likely to be the same person, & not just the same species. If she has continued to be cruel to Cora across so many years, then I’d also assume that a long-&-involved story is implied, which we’ll most likely never hear …
… because we’re already neck-deep in flashbacks — to date, we’ve had only FOUR_PAGES (not counting “fillers” & “guest artists”) that WEREN’T flashbacks! If we delved any deeper, we’d risk getting trapped in a recursively fractal “loop”, with no hope of escape!
( … insert overly melodramatic cringing gesture here, followed by exaggerated gesture of supplication… )
Have mercy!
( … insert overly-dramatic whimpering here … )
I’m too young to spend the rest of my life re-capping!
Cora grew up and became a famous adventurer and the mean girl fell in love with her and is now perpetually heart broken.
Actually the tormentor most likely married the town jock who went on to become a used spaceship salesman, where she failed at becoming a model or actress because she got pregnant right out of school and now weighs 300 lbs and works as a supermarket cashier.
or is now a famous model and porn star BECAUSE she’s over 300 lbs
Nah. The bully, we’ll call her ‘Peg’ for convenience, went on to marry the high school jock (he once scored four touchdowns in the same game!) who went on to become a shoe salesman.
[Oberon]:
I like this.
:)
For convenience (& with apologies to Paul Simon), we can call him AL.
That’s a good sign, it indicates less overall people involved.
This is a high-school scenario – there’s always an Alpha Bongo that picks on the nerds and weirdos.
DAMN YOU WILLIS! Your chat filters are spilling to other webcomics!
*gasp* My brain!! HE’S IN MY BRAIN!!!
I generally love the strip and reccomend it OFTEN.
Of course that American system makes most of the advances in medical tech as well.
Am lower middle class have been upper lower class had MRI to find that I did not have brain cancer while ULC. The syste. Is not perfect but none are.
Oh, the odds of the limb suit bring ferromagnetic in a high tech world (like the USA in 1995) is pretty low.. Al,Ti,polymer and carbon fiber are all better and common.
Stop trying to cover for our massively corrupt and greedy medical system. And of course middle class would say something like this. People can’t see how fortunate they are, they just assume that if they experienced something good then most other people can, too.
Our ‘medical system’ is just a huge business. No poor people allowed. Which is most of America at this point, thanks.
I don’t know where you are, but my brother in law has a pretty major medical condition, and he mostly gets better care in the US than he got in Canada. And no, he’s not what I’d call rich; I’d probably peg him as lower-middle class, although I haven’t exactly gone over his tax returns.
I will grant you that a lot of bad stuff happens, and that US medical care is way more expensive than it needs to be… but most things have both advantages and disadvantages. They’re seldom in balance, and when multiple options are around, which one is “better” depends in large part on one’s priorities and recent experiences… but all setups have both advantages and disadvantages relative to other setups.
The main factors that fscked up the American medical are insurance-company reps, and government over-regulation.
The reps pushed up the price by demanding discounts. They pushed up the MSRP to be able to give the “discount”. Except cash-paying people must pay MSRP.
And government fscks up EVERYTHING.
You must be a Fox “News” fan.
Why do you say that? Sure, a lot of conservatives don’t care for government regulation, but they also typically don’t give a fuck about people who can’t afford or are uncovered/undercovered by health care. So we see a mixed bag in Troy’s post, not just some right wing screed.
“The free market is always better” Government interventions broke up the cartels and ended company towns. You thing it’s expensive now, wait until they can call up any price they want or you literally die. The FDA mostly prevents dangerous drugs and food. They would poison you if there is money in it.
The trouble with the free market is that sooner or later some jerk tries to corner the market on freedom.
Honestly, I see it more as “emergent behavior” – most (if not all) of the individual factors are things people look at and say either “That’s perfectly fine” or “there’s nothing anybody could do about that,” but the net effect is something folks don’t like. If you yank a small number of factors, the net effect that folks don’t like goes away (hardly even matters which factors), but then… there’s reasonably good reason for each of the individual factors to exist (other than the sort that nobody can do much about).
Factors as I see them:
First: Exclusive control
The inventor gets exclusive rights to control production of a thing for a limited period of time.
This is written straight into the US constitution (specific timeframe based in current law, rather than the constitution: currently 20 years for patents, but copyright theoretically has something similar).
The exclusive control exists for good reason: If this exclusive control did NOT exist, then nothing with a high development cost and a low production cost (which is to say, most manufactured goods) would ever be developed: The developer has to integrate the development costs into the product costs, but the competitor who buys one and reverse-engineers it doesn’t. The guy who develops the thing goes out of business in short order, as he can’t compete (price-wise) with the copycats.
The “limited time” also exists for good reason: Can you imagine what would happen if Tesla’s inheritors decided to ban the production of alternating current electricity? When a thing becomes a necessary part of everyday life, having one person who can arbitrarily say “No, you can’t get those anymore” is very, very bad. So there’s a limit, after which anyone can copy it.
Second: The standard controls of capitalism break down when it comes to medicine.
This has several parts.
Pare A: Insurance.This exists because medicine is expensive. If it were cheap to go to the doctor and get cancer treated, few folks would bother. Insurance helps keep folks from getting completely financially ruined by a medical condition.
The downside, though, is that it separates folks from the actual costs by enough steps that few bother to “shop around” – which means there’s basic tenants of capitalism don’t function (few check to see if the hospital an hour’s drive away will treat their cancer for less than the one five minutes away; unless they think they’ve got better odds with the hour-away hospital – so there’s no real competition).
However… insurance doesn’t actually remove the costs! It just spreads them out. So when the cost of medical care goes up, so do the premiums.
Part B: Production has a very high entry cost. US Doctors go through 8 years of schooling (4 years undergraduate, 4 years medical) and then another 3-7 years in residency or fellowships before they can properly practice. It’s expensive – extremely so – to become a doctor. The schooling is needed – a single mistake can kill someone, leave them in agony for the rest of their life, and more. But this means there’s much less “production” than there otherwise would be.
Part C: Development has very high entry costs. Getting a new drug approved by the FDA costs roughly $19 million due to clinical trials, required documentation, and so on… and that doesn’t count the costs to actually come up with the thing. These hoops are needed: You can’t have someone claiming that their new drug will cure your cancer for just $5,000 without some evidence that it actually works and won’t kill you. The hoops may be excessive, but they exist because there were a lot of folks that took advantage when they didn’t (look up snake oil salesmen, historically).
Part D: Demand is absolute. Buy or die. I don’t imagine this needs much explanation.
Third: Some folks are greedy, and don’t see (or don’t care) about the harm.
Fact of life. But when a greedy jerk buys out a company that was planning on selling a life-saving medicine for $10/dose at a reasonable profit, and the greedy jerk jacks the price up to $100/dose… well.
Likewise, when the guy running a hospital can basically set prices at whatever… well, if he doesn’t quite grasp that insurance merely spreads out costs, he’s got little reason not to charge through the roof for anyone with insurance.
Likewise, when a sue-happy patient gets hurt by someone’s mistake, sues the hospital for $X million because he no longer has his little toe… well, the hospital has two choices: make sure their rates cover such incidents, or close up shop.
The net effect? Medical problems are super-expensive. You can’t do much about it without a complete overhaul, though – and few folks with the oomph to get that done stand to benefit from it happening, so it’s not going to do so any time soon.
Ironically, the “medicine is super-expensive in the US” thing that most folks don’t like? Even that has a benefit (for everyone else): The US medical industry also ends up with the biggest research budget – more than any other country’s medical industry. By a lot. Which means the US citizens are paying for most of the world’s medical research. Which means everyone benefits in the end (after all, the patent on that cure for althimerz’s disease that’s just around the corner will expire in about 20 years, and then the generics will crash the price down to close-to-nothing…) it’s just sometimes really, really hard to feel that when advances in medicine seem so far removed from you.
To elaborate on the inelastic demand of part D: The demand from the perspective of the individual is an immediate constant – buy or die, right now. But from the “big picture” view, the better medical tech is, the more people survive, means an eventually greater realized future demand for more medical intervention, barring some fantasy utopia breakthrough that causes everyone to never need medical intervention ever again. So the bleeding edge stuff will naturally end up not being at 100% saturation due to the ever expending costs, either because the individual cannot afford it or because the system is too overloaded on demand/supply to provide it.
Which means everyone else benefits, eventually… from making you suffer right now.
Sounds like COMMUNISM!
Eh, depends. You don’t necessarily use what’s best, you use what does the job and is within the budget. Given that the thing is self-propelled, if motors with steel components get the job done, don’t exceed weight restrictions for various things (elevators, floors, busses, or their high-tech equivalents), aren’t a safety hazard when expected safety procedures are followed (pretty good odds NOBODY is supposed to be that close to the magnetic impeller when it’s operational; a simple pocket pen would be a nasty hazard under the kind of force that could stick a body to a wall), and are cheaper than non-ferromagnetic alternative components… then there’s no real reason NOT to use them.
Is that hutt buff? Is that a buff hutt? I am intrigued.
At least it’s better than a butt huff.
In french we would call her a trunk woman.
Because the French are all insensitive jerks.
no, that would be the Yanks.
I don’t see any Yanks calling disabled women “trunk women.”
No, they were implying that only Yanks are insensitive jerks
More counter-generalizing when someone generalized. Why generalizing is stupid.
Sounds like a contortionist.
In years of delighted reading, this one was the best one yet.
When I saw “quadriplegic”, I assumed that it WAS paralysis, and they just wound up replacing the nonfunctional limbs.
*searches for Universities offering degrees in Applied Carnage*
I believe your easiest choice would be the Military… though Cora doesn’t seem to be the military type to me, so i get the next bet would be a Mercenary Company.. Tagon’s Toughs would probably have an equivalent in the Xenoarchy i’d assume. and the third choice i can think of is of course “The School of Hard Knocks” …Tuition is free, but the entrance exam is a real humdinger though…
Well, this page explains why Cora handling assaulter is considered littering
I wasn’t sure at first if Cora’s arms and legs just didn’t work or if they were missing entirely, and to be honest I find the latter WAY creepier for some reason. It’s like a thalidomide-baby on steroid.
So for my own ick-factor, I’m going to just keep pretending that she’s going non-functional limbs inside a metallic covering rather than that the suit is a full prosthesis.
Ug… Highschool flashbacks.
I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to take hundreds of emotionally immature hormonal youths and put them together with minimal supervision.
I don’t know. One could say, that while her planet’s tech flourished, they hadn’t quite got to cloning replacements yet.
This.
This, exactly.
Not all tech proceeds at the same advancement rate. It’s only been within the last decade and a half that we’ve been able to replace Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) television sets and computer monitors with flatscreens. We spent over 50 years with horrible huge bulky crap that was heavy, curved, and did not have good visual definition…because the tech to make better hadn’t been invented yet. It took microcircuitry, fiber optics, and more to make LED screens and high-definition television a thing. Tech piggybags off of other tech, so some of it is always stalling, then leapfrogging forward.
And some things just don’t get investigated or invented…or forgotten for a very long time We only recently rediscovered how to make chemical cement instead of thermal cement, for example, allowing us to create artificial limestone, granite, and so forth.
We also currently have heavy restriction on cloning attempts, for good reason. (No one wants a mad scientist.) So that could be a factor, too. It’s dangerous to have a mechanical suit taken over…but you can usually remove the suit. Kinda harder to remove a grafted limb that’s been biologically subverted.
If the problem was genetic rather than an accident before birth, it is possible that cloning limbs would be ineffective. A genetic disorder might mean that the cloned limbs would have the same problems as the initial ones. Of course, trying to make sense of a fictional universe is questionable and ineffective. (Look up the MST3K theme song lyrics around where it says “other science stuff”.)
When people refer to “chemical cement”, I thought that they were referring to cements not based on limestone or similar materials. Examples are epoxy cement and urethane cement. Artificial limestone and artificial granite look like limestone and granite, but don’t have the same composition and structure. This is different from “synthetic”, where synthetic diamonds and synthetic rubies have the same chemical composition and structure as the materials produced by natural processes.
You could seek out and fix the genetic defect before you start the process for division into the cells and differentiated into muscles, bones, etc. to grow them if you don’t print them out in a 3D printer.
A prime example of tech not being developed concurrently or even being brought together is the Roman Empire and its lack of an industrial revolution. everything necessary fro a steam powered technological leap existed in the Roman Empire. Pistons, metallurgy, even steam powered toys, were all present. They just never got put together to create steam powered engines.
I’ll be perfectly honest – I was a textbook nerd throughout all high school (I played Duel Monsters with friends at lunch) and nothing like this ever happened to me or anyone else I knew. Name calling was as bad as it got, and that was just one person.
Well Sora2455, that sounds great. I was also a textbook nerd and I still have the discoloration above my knee where a bully stabbed me with a pencil so deep that it left graphite embedded deep under the skin. It looks a bit like a grey mole. Its still there and that was more than 20 years ago. I suppose its a bit like a tattoo, only I had to stab him back to get him to stop instead of paying him for it. My guess is that bullying is heavily dependent on what sort of leadership you get from the adults. Teenage bullies cant really get away with it on their own since they are just kids. The adults have more power (police etc. . .) and more physical strength. Bullies rely on the adults looking the other way.
Good to see that at least one of the Mighty Orbots found something fun to do after the series ended soo quickly, though it makes you wonder which of the twins was it? Bow or Boom, or at least I think that was their names…
See https://well-of-souls.com/orbots/orbots.htm. It looks like this is Boo, and her sister was named Bo.
Thank you, wasn’t sure about that show, butt after looking at the page (after ignoring the Certificate Warning), do vaguely recall possibly seeing it, maybe once
People commenting on how bullies can be allowed to exist, blame the government and adults!
About 15 or 20 years ago, the government (ours and a few other countries’) decided to ‘fix’ the problem with abusive parents by passing the “Anti-Smacking Law”, that’s right, they made it illegal (and a criminal offense) to smack a child, which meant discipline went out the window. It didn’t stop the bad abusive parents, it just made criminals out of the good ones and gave rise to an entire generation of bad children
Remember in the ‘good old days’ when a kid would throw a tantrum in the supermarket or department store because mummy or daddy wouldn’t buy them a bag of lollies or that $500 dollar toy and mummy or daddy would just give them a quick smack? Yeah, criminal offense now, you have to either cringe and leave as quickly as you can with nasty looks and comments, or give in to the demands of the spoilt brat. Not even the police are allowed to do anything
This is _exactly_ the problem with a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction law. it’s says it’s there to prevent child abuse, and actually hinders the parents ability to discipline their children. There has to be a balance. As I’ve heard more than one say “that’s why butts are padded”. Laws are too ‘absolute’ and just putting out a law, does not solve the issue.
crime and punishment. one should be equivalent to the other to make it worthwhile.
There was an Aussie Tele-movie about that, about what happens to an entire family after one of the parents is simply accused of smacking their misbehaving brat
Like said, turning good parents into criminals
” smack a child, which meant discipline went out the window”. Nonsense. Abuseive parents, created violent children.
Which should be punished. Those who take discipline beyond a reasonable threshold or who abuse children out of spite or arbitrarily should have been the ones targeted. But not every parent who used punishment judiciously. At a guess I would say 19 out of 20 of the people I know, of my generation, are satisfied that most smackings we got were well justified. Even if the few exceptions may be remembered better for their injustice.
Which is not to say that the 1 in 20’s abusive upbringing, which scarred them (pyschologically and/or physically) for life and ruined their lives, should be excused. Rather those parents should have the book thrown at them.
But not the other 19 families too! I agree with Guesticus that it was utter stupidity and should be repealed.
Any politician disagreeing with me should get a good smacking, until they see sense. ;-)
You didn’t read the whole mess of a post, did you? They made it illegal to smack a child, some children need a smack on their arse when they are misbehaving , butt because of this stupid law, kids who otherwise may have been helped learnt they can do whatever they want and not even the police could do anything until it was too late
It did nothing to stop the real abusive parents, because they continued doing it behind doors mostly in secret
There was an episode of SVU, where Liv was walking her adopted son to school, they were just about to cross a street when a car almost ran her son over, she grabbed his arm and pulled him to safety. Unfortunately, she ended up being investigated on suspicion of being an abusive parent because her sons teacher saw the bruise
That is what the world has become: a parent that saves their child from getting run over gets labelled as ‘abusive’, and yet parents like those in California who had chained up their kids for decades get to continue treating their children worse than the family dog simply because the neighbours “didn’t see anything”
[It did nothing to stop the real abusive parents, because they continued doing it behind doors mostly in secret]
How is it only the “abusive” parents could get away with it and not the “good” parents? You made it sound like the “bad” ones have some power the “good” ones do not. Which is ridiculous. However if you have a society where inflicting pain is good for children why isn’t it good for parents and other adults as well. Welcome back the flogging post…or find some other means of discipline.
Not talking about ‘inflicting pain’, that’s what the abusive parents are doing, talking about a short sharp smack on the arse when the brat does something wrong
If you can’t see the difference between a sustained and systematic continued beating and a single smack, then there is something wrong with you. Do you also agree with giving every child who participates in a sporting activity a medal? Even if they came last?
Alas, parents can no longer Release The Smacken when the bratsignal is heard. My parents used spankings for discipline, and I did not run around throwing Molotov cocktails or doing number 2 on a police car.
Heh, had a good chuckle when read that line in that webic :D
By the looks of it the movement is controlled by the spin unit through the push/pull of the small arm connectors (as well as one for her elbow). This would make her movements pretty clunky, and the need for a free range of motion would restrict her ability to wear anything over it. I hope she lived someplace warm.
ignore this, it’s supposed to be a reply to something above
“Of course I can shoot lasers out of my eyes at people who pester me, which probably makes my ride experience a bit different from yours.”
I can’t be the only one who’s at least a little bit curious about what she looks like without the suit, am I?
I mean, is that weird?
not weird at all
she looks exactly the same without the suit, by the way…just without the suit.
And without limbs (either fully or mostly)
I hope this police tragedy will inspire a vote incentive tribute.
It’s good that the cops still have a sense of humour :D
Um, Dave?
It looks from the last few posts that you may have to implement an ‘I am a human’ (or other sentient life form) gateway for signups to block the robo-spam posters from getting a foothold in the comment section.
Possible questions:
1: Pick one. A) I am human. B) Kill all humans!
2: In the movie ‘Terminator’ Skynet was A) The villain. B) The hero.
3: If asked, should you open the pod bay doors? A) Yes. B) No.
I wonder if all the website update shenannegains have thrown the anti spam plugins for a loop.
So her back story is typical Jr high/high school?
I very very intensely dislike bullies. Very much so.
The most common places to find bullies is wherever there isn’t oversight.
Let’s take the mental institute I grew up in. Got molested there. Did I try and turn them in? Yes. What happened? “Oh well you’re in a mental institute. You’re crazy. So I’ll decide you’re lying and look into nothing.” So it continues. Gets worse, because now they know they can get away with it.
Same thing with abusive households. The abuser is nervous about it at first, then sees they won’t get punished or stopped. It’s easier for people, including the police, to say that it’s at least partially the victim’s fault so they don’t have to put in any effort and can release themselves of any potential emotional involvement as well. So it gets worse because the abuser gets emboldened.
George Carlin had an interesting take on why our public schools fail in so many ways.
The ones that own the country(s) WANT it that way. They want the masses to have just enough education to run the system without breaking the machine an to fill out the paperwork..
why would they want an informed public that sees what is really going on to oust the them out of their money?
If you want a real education you have to get it yourself.
Question everything
Thanks there, Agent Mulder.
Sometimes, Carlin was an idiot
Just because he was an idiot doesn’t mean he was wrong.
Depends on what he was ranting about
And sometimes he was an absolute genius. Remember that however stupid the average person is, half of them are stupider than THAT.
Well, yeah, problem is, most people view him as the epitome of ‘smart’ rather than just a ‘smart-arse’ who knew his audience
You don’t need to be smart to point out stupid stuff in our lives and society that could be fixed but are not.
Take the do-not-call registry for instance. If anything its got worse and has done zilch to fix the problem.
(Snicker.) Obligatory “ice chest” joke….
High school was a PITA as far as I was concerned. Being a brainiac, talented, witty and scrawny was not the best of combinations in the blackboard jungle. My friends were pretty much like me, so at least we could circle the wagons if threatened as a group. Alone you depended on your wits to avoid conflict. Gym was Hell, period. The girls, forget it. They liked jocks, bikers, motorheads, greasers (pre war def.), Handsome guys, BMOC’s and those with money rated high too. Studies bored me except for the college prep courses and for Shop I chose Mechanical Drawing or Drafting. I’ve never been to a class reunion and never will go.
I can fully sympathize with Cora. Teens are little bastards.
Yeah, and in the UK the government would have decided that it was more cost effective to let the limbless baby die, then prohibit the parents from taking the baby to the US.
In Canada Cora would have got her first set of limbs as a graduation present – free of course.