By the early 80's martial arts master Takashi Azuma had earned advanced black belts in Judo and Kyokushin. He then created a synthesis of the two arts, now called Kudo. At first glance Kudo looks like MMA with uniforms and helmets (raising the question as to why we still need Judo or TKD in the Olympics when we could have Kudo instead):
But the use of the Gi in Kudo is even more practical and street-fighting related than what we find in in other Gi-grappling arts:
While those helmets make for some good-looking athletes with relatively few boxer's noses and cauliflower ears compared to MMA, those helmets also help allow headbutts which are now often illegal even in MMA. When I studied Judo off and on over the course of a decade (never making it close to yellow belt,) I was always puzzled at how easy it was to accidentally smack your head into your opponent's head in many Judo throws. Allowing headbutts as intentional attacks makes for more head position awareness:
Kudo has a rich tradition and philosophy as well, complete with (above mentioned) legendary martial arts master founder doing a super human martial arts stunt:
Though it is interesting that Kudo has been around far longer than MMA, Kudo has managed to incorporate plenty of boxing, Muay Thai and BJJ over the years, so that it is basically the perfect martial art for the self defense consumer:
I have stated repeatedly that the number one reason why Hillary lost the electoral college vote was because she continued to defend Obamacare (ACA) even as it continued to fail the fly-over states. Many of you seem to think Health Care Coverage is not the number one political issue of our time, yet it is.
Various polls have shown that when the policy is explained to the person being asked, we in the USA strongly prefer a "single payer" system for health care to any alternative. The problem is now the name "single payer" because of the specific disaster mentioned above with health insurance monopolies created in Obamacare exchanges. The plain American English for what we mean by "single payer" (which is not private health insurance monopolies) is "Medicare for All," as espoused by Bearnie Sander's platform. There was a very significant anti-establishment overlap between Trump voters and Sanders voters, but once Hillary got her party's nomination, she guaranteed "Medicare for All" would not be on the agenda, and voters desperate for change on this one most important issue had little choice but to vote for Trump.
Before Obamacare, we Americans were easily frightened by tales from Western Europe and Canada about the failures of single-payer health care coverage. However now that we have seen just how rapidly things can decline, a "European-style health care system" is sounding very good to us. There is one other English speaking country in the Americas, and they are right next door to us. We know the Canadians have a superior health care system to ours, and there isn't any hiding it. 10 years ago you could have pointed to their taxes and convinced us it was too luxurious for the USA, but now that we have seen our health care prices skyrocket in spite of the Obamacare overhaul, "Canadian taxes" are the least of our health insurance expense concerns.
As Americans, we believe in freedom, so that employer based health insurance is a very poor cultural match for us:
From an employer's perspective, an entrepreneur or manager shouldn't have to sweat how to cover employee health insurance. This is not a natural part of the wages vs. hours formula, and when health care insurance prices go up for exactly the same or worse coverage, your employees do not appreciate what you are paying for them because they aren't paying for it, except for in lower and less frequent raises. Employer-based health insurance impedes our ability as Americans to complete fairly in business.
From an employee's perspective, the threat of losing employment means loosing access to your doctor. For anyone with a significant health condition OR at risk for a serious health care condition (basically all of us,) this is very like threatening our lives. In other words, employer-based health care for the employee is strikingly similar to guns-pointed-at-our-heads slavery.
I also often say "do not tell me about political parties. Instead give me Libertarians and Socialists, so we can have a grown up conversation about meaningful policies." In an era were most jobs are rapidly being replaced my automation, the most important question voters should be asking themselves (besides perhaps issues around maintaining their rights to vote in the first place,) is "what should be paid for by taxes, and what shouldn't be paid for by taxes." We get so caught up in political bike shed issues, that this critical question is rarely debated:
Roads should be paid for by taxes, because they are too expensive for any of us individually to build and maintain, but we all need those roads. See also military, court system, government, etc.
Chocolate should not be paid for by taxes, because it is inexpensive enough for anyone who wants it to get it, and even in the case of extraordinarily expensive chocolate, we do not depend on chocolate to survive. See also piano lessons, watermelons, entertainment, etc.
In the days of the traveling door-to-door doctor (think 1800's,) health care coverage was far more affordable and far less effective at extending our survival. Now in 2017 health care is like roads, incredibly expensive and critical to survival in our society. Health care should be paid for by taxes and have have nothing to do with our decisions regarding business plans or how we spend our days.
At the Game Arts Guild we get the most powerful hardware we can afford by buying last-years laptops that haven't sold and go on sale to make room for the latest inventory. We then put Linux on them instead of Windows to get maximum performance (and so they aren't at all outdated.) I have two secrets that make this simple to do.
First and foremost, if your Linux machine has a problem where the screen freezes up for no apparent reason (a chronic problem for us in the past), do this:
Your first clue is because it has been the most popular version of Linux on DistroWatch.com for a very long time.
Your second clue is that though it is based on Ubuntu (the other most popular type of Linux) it has three major versions, two Ubuntu versions (MATE based on the older, faster, more established Gnome 2, vs. Cinnamon based on the slower, fancier Gnome 3,) and a Debian version, so that the Mint Linux community has a very clear definition of what their operating system experience should be like in spite of whatever desktop (MATE vs. Cinnamon) or back end (Ubuntu vs. Debian) they are using. Obviously you should be going with Mint MATE in most cases.
Anything lighter weight than Mint MATE (like say Xubuntu) comes at a great sacrifice (as with Xubuntu's Thunar file manager which in my experience cannot reliably either move large files around or see USB drives. Lubuntu? Worse.) The good news is that Android is turning into a real OS called "Andromeda," and most low end machines will not need a new OS for most users.
That Mint "definition of operating system experience" is ideal. The default set up is simple, familiar, easy to use, and conscious of screen real estate. It installs easily. It starts with the software that makes the most sense such as VLC for a media player and GIMP for an image editor. This Mint definition has also very stable, not changing with fads like Windows 8. Installing other software on it (such as the Chrome Browser) is easy.
