"I Miss The Days When Star Trek Wasn't So Political."

"I miss the days when star trek wasn't so political."

I grew up watching Voyager and TNG with my mom. Some episodes were about lasers and robots and weird aliens, but sometimes my mom would ask me the question 'what real world controversy is this really about?' So were they lasers or were they symbols of imperialistic violence? Were they robots or were they about how we quantify life, and where do we draw the line for rights? Were they weird aliens or was it about Bosnian refugees? And sometimes they were subtle about it, but even when I was pretty young i understood things like... war crimes and personhood.

So like... maybe yall just weren't paying attention?

Young Adult Protagonist

Letting the Organas adopt Leia is kinda sus, to be fair.

It would be easier to pass Leia off as the daughter of one of Padme's cousins, and easier to build up Leia's cover story amongst family and relatives.

Besides, what was Palpatine going to do about it? Destabilize his newly formed empire by attacking Naboo?

The Organas adopting Leia is definitely sus.

Scratching Below the Surface of the Happy Organa Family

There are all these posts circulating now about how awesome Bail and Breha are. And they are. There is no denying they are good and brave people who did an amazing job with Leia and risked a lot to do it. That is to their credit. I am also 100% here for reminding people that adoptive parents are parents. They deserve that credit. So normally, I would be 110% behind Leia is an Organa. She is Bail’s and Breha’s daughter. 

But I can’t, because it’s not legitimate. Every time I see these posts I want to go Yay!!! and get in with the vibes and the feels, and the bittersweet beauty of it, but I can’t. Maybe it’s because the work I do involves crisis pregnancies, adoptions, adoptees etc. and I also have family that was adopted. I am obliged to know at least a little bit about how this works. This is why I get really squicky, because…Leia was not adopted. She was kidnapped.

Think about it. Did Padme give her baby up for adoption? Did Anakin? Now, an argument could be made that Bail, Obi-Wan, and Yoda could hardly risk giving the child to Anakin, and at the time thought he was dead. So, we’ll say his parental rights are terminated as he is unfit. Fine. But, did Padme have a will? Who did she want her child to be raised by if something should happen to her and her husband? And if she did not, then Bail and Obi-Wan and Yoda still can’t do whatever the heck they want. They need to go to Padme’s family, (as well as to Anakin’s). The Naberries had a say in this as much as the Lars’ (who were never told the whole truth either). What, you deliver their dead daughter’s corpse and don’t even tell them their grandbabies survived? Ever. That’s wrong. That’s so so wrong. 

Now, if you do die intestate, or if there is no section for guardianship, the court gets involved to decide who gets the kids. Granted, that can’t be risked in this circumstance. But, generally, kids do go to remaining family. Bail, Obi-Wan, and Yoda could and should still have handled this informally with them. That would be the decent thing to do. 

Or are we supposed to accept that all this is legal, because all Force-Sensitive children are to have their fate decided by the Jedi, so they can do whatever the heck they want? Guess that’s why Yoda’s making the final decision on Luke and Leia’s fates. That’s probably it, isn’t it? Gross. Wrong on so many levels. 

This is sooo squicky. It is impossible for me to unequivocally enjoy content about the happy Organa family without thinking that that is….not how adoption works. That is just taking someone’s grandchild. That is just taking someone’s niece. That is just taking someone’s child. 

Cool Motive.

Still Kidnapping. 

casual reminder the MCU is the work of the devil

How the Pentagon Leaned on Hollywood to Sell the War in Afghanistan

What is Aikido?

Connect. Lead. Resolve.

Aikido is a Martial Art that addresses conflict by affecting the flow of an Opponent's energy, instead of addressing the Opponent's physical technique.

It doesn't matter whether it's a punch or a grab, all attacks are simply vehicles to transfer the kinetic energy into a target. There are two ways to resolve this;

Stop the technique.

Take out the energy that fuels the technique.

Aikido focuses on the latter method, and its technique teaches a student how to sense, affect, and ultimately harmonize with the energy of an attack.

If you know how to affect the energy, or Ki, of an Opponent's attack, it doesn't really matter what the Opponent's attack is.

Thousands of premature infants were saved from certain death by being part of a Coney Island entertainment sideshow.

At the time premature babies were considered genetically inferior, and were simply left to fend for themselves and ultimately die.

Dr Martin Couney offered desperate parents a pioneering solution that was as expensive as it was experimental - and came up with a very unusual way of covering the costs.

It was Coney Island in the early 1900’s. Beyond the Four-Legged Woman, the sword swallowers, and “Lionel the Lion-Faced Man,” was an entirely different exhibit: rows of tiny, premature human babies living in glass incubators.

The brainchild of this exhibit was Dr. Martin Couney, an enigmatic figure in the history of medicine. Couney created and ran incubator-baby exhibits on the island from 1903 to the early 1940s.

Behind the gaudy facade, premature babies were fighting for their lives, attended by a team of medical professionals.To see them, punters paid 25 cents.The public funding paid for the expensive care, which cost about $15 a day in 1903 (the equivalent of $405 today) per incubator.

Couney was in the lifesaving business, and he took it seriously. The exhibit was immaculate. When new children arrived, dropped off by panicked parents who knew Couney could help them where hospitals could not, they were immediately bathed, rubbed with alcohol and swaddled tight, then “placed in an incubator kept at 96 or so degrees, depending on the patient. Every two hours, those who could suckle were carried upstairs on a tiny elevator and fed by breast by wet nurses who lived in the building. The rest [were fed by] a funneled spoon. The smallest baby Couney handled is reported to have weighed a pound and a half.

His nurses all wore starched white uniforms and the facility was always spotlessly clean.

An early advocate of breast feeding, if he caught his wet nurses smoking or drinking they were sacked on the spot. He even employed a cook to make healthy meals for them.

The incubators themselves were a medical miracle, 40 years ahead of what was being developed in America at that time.

Each incubator was made of steel and glass and stood on legs, about 5ft tall. A water boiler on the outside supplied hot water to a pipe running underneath a bed of mesh, upon which the baby slept.

Race, economic class, and social status were never factors in his decision to treat and Couney never charged the parents for the babies care.The names were always kept anonymous, and in later years the doctor would stage reunions of his “graduates.

According to historian Jeffrey Baker, Couney’s exhibits “offered a standard of technological care not matched in any hospital of the time.”

Throughout his decades of saving babies, Couney understood there were better options. He tried to sell, or even donate, his incubators to hospitals, but they didn’t want them. He even offered all his incubators to the city of New York in 1940, but was turned down.

In a career spanning nearly half a century he claimed to have saved nearly 6,500 babies with a success rate of 85 per cent, according to the Coney Island History

In 1943, Cornell New York Hospital opened the city’s first dedicated premature infant station. As more hospitals began to adopt incubators and his techniques, Couney closed the show at Coney Island. He said his work was done.

Today, one in 10 babies born in the United States is premature, but their chance of survival is vastly improved—thanks to Couney and the carnival babies.

https://nypost.com/2018/07/23/how-fake-docs-carnival-sideshow-brought-baby-incubators-to-main-stage/

Book: The strange case of Dr. Couney

New York Post Photograph: Beth Allen

Original FB post by Liz Watkins Barton