2007 - A Short Story Focusing on The Cut-Throat Effect of Texas Hold 'Em Poker

There were only two people in one hot Texas Hold Em' final at the Ravi Penthouse

on the north side of Chicago, during a private party involving 14 office executives

who played the game.  On the 24th floor, 12 were eliminated from the table and had to sit a distance from the table on party chairs on another table that was not part of the game, leaving only Daniel and Sue..

An official, dressed like a regular basketball referee, walked around the table to make sure that no cheating was allowed in the game.

The winner of the poker game, who earned at least $10,000 in chips, would win an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris, France.

Daniel had $4,000 in chips, and Sue had about $5,000.

The dealer then gave two hole cards to each player, and then, the players hide the cards face down. The dealer gave two cards to Sue, first.

Sue, who wore a dark blue velvet dress and had a blonde pony tail, held a deuce of spades and a four of spades, both black.

Then, with the dealer going to Daniel to give two cards, Sue

snatched the two original hole cards from the table, put them in an inside shirt pocket, and replaced them with two red cards, an ace of diamonds and jack of diamonds.

Daniel was given a five of spades and an eight of spades, both black.

Then, as the dealer comes back to face Sue, Sue says to the dealer that she will play the hand, and Daniel also says that he will play his hand.

Sue then bets all of her own chips by putting them in front of the dealer, saying "All in,"

The dealer then introduces a flop of all diamonds--a red three, five, and seven. Sue widened her mouth round, and said "Yea".

Daniel was frozen, as if he was about to fold to Sue.

Then, the dealer gives the turn, a red four of diamonds. Daniel hit his head on the fist, and says, "I fold!", and gives his hole cards back to the dealer.

The dealer then realizes Daniel's plight, and decides not to do the turn card.  Sue hops up and dances around in place. "I just won $10,000 and I am going to Paris!

Soon after, an official comes in and accosts Sue. "I think I saw you replace the hole card by deception."

"I don't think so."  Sue then widened her mouth without trying to make the mouth in a circle. "I was just trying to scratch under my shirt."

The official then leers at her. "I think that you are lying about it."

"No, I am telling the truth." Sue then bursts out laughing.

The dealer then puts a pointed finger down to the floor. Then the official said "You have been disqualified for illicit replacement of a hole card, and thus you forfeit all of your winnings."

Daniel then jumped several times and raised his left fist in the air, as the official, saying "Daniel's the winner", as he raised Daniel's left arm high. The other eliminated players then applauded him.

Sue then put on her brown trench coat, droops her face and went out the door, slamming it. The other executives almost stood still.

Daniel then shook hands and hugged the other eliminated players, and then, he faced the official, who raised his eyes in the air.

"Yes, Texas Hold-Em is deceptive, Daniel, but I had never seen poker deception going way too far."

Daniel then put one of his right hands in his pocket. "Yea, it happens."

First Person Review--The "Red Swan" At Links Hall Shows Dancer Asimina Chermos at Her Best (December 17, 2007)

From the wooden dance floor that was there for all of Chicago's contemporary dancers to perform in for over 30 years---Links Hall---"The Red Swan" was more than I had expected to see in a typical contemporary dance show. It is not just dancing....but it is the feelings that come from dancing. And Asimina Chermos, the main star of the show, showed why she is the best of the "newest" dancers out there.

She is probably the most famous Chicago area contemporary dancer around. But I also liked the fact that she also mixes in ballet---perhaps the best ballet I had seen from any contemporary dancer.

As a contemporary/performance art dancer myself, I had appreciated the fact that this was the first live contemporary dance show I ever seen in this dance space.

It was like you are in the original Blues Brothers movie as the loud noise of the CTA "L" train passes by occasionally near Links Hall, but most of the dancers and the audience didn't see to mind.

This venue on Clark and Sheffield, right in the heart of Wrigleyville on the North Side of Chicago and a long "stone's throw" away from Wrigley Field, looks almost like a loft room, but it was the place where hundreds of contemporary dancers create their independent dance shows ranging from Field Sessions to Poonie's Cabaret.

The "Red Swan" basically is a dance project by Asimina herself....the show's premise is to create a movement-based homage to famous ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn, although with contemporary twists....taking care not to segregate classical ballet (that Ms. Fonteyn is famous for) from contemporary dance. The result is a multifacted dance.... that is, you see some ballet, then contemporary, then you see some ballet again, and so forth.

The "Red Swan" dance show was in three distinct parts, and I used this to create my own comments related to the show the show.

PART I

Well, as the house opened to low lights, dancing had already started---something like a "pre-show", as I sat down on stage. It was a full house of about 90 people after about 19 minutes into the show.

This first part was what I call a contact improvisation "warmup dance" greeting the crowd. (Contact improvisation is a type of contemporary dance where at least two dancers communicate through movement, but focusing on touching in various areas, and reacting to those sensations.)

In this improvisation, I saw 2 men and 4 ladies converge, converse, contract and expand.

Out comes Asimina......away from the contact improvisation circle, doing a handstand, and going back to the contact improvisation circle.

They are doing what I call call a "sixsome", a type of orgy based on the sexual intimacy position called "threesome".

Then, the six break up into groups of 2 people, for a total of 3 groups, for approximately 4-5, changing poses constantly, and each group fluctuates in a different pose

in the changes.

Then, 2 dancers in black--one man, one woman--separate from the contact improvisation pack for only about 25 seconds before they come back in the "blob".

Asimina then pulls one of the black-donned dancers as if it were a cart, and then, Asimina takes the lead, giving the red swan ballet tutu to one of the red-donned dancers, and then Asimin falls on the floor again.

The swan-tutu seems to be like and endless moving prop as it is passed from one dancer...to the next...and back to that dancer again.

A knock is heard from the east side of the room. Asimina responds and opens up the escape door to the dance studio, and it is a tall man who was in winter garb. After he takes off the winter garb, he is in khaki pants and a tee shirt. I was anticipating that he was going to be in a black leotard and a ballet shirt because this work is in honor of

Margot Fonteyn, but this bizarre garb tells me that this is going to be a contemporary reaction to Margot Fonteyn....not a strict "homage" to it.

After Asimina walks up and stops at the end of stage right, going into a ballet move called a posé (where the free leg is in tendu en avant, in front of the back leg, and one of the arms is forward and straight out, and the other arm is straight back but more to the side), the tall man runs up to Asimina so that he is behind her very closely...he invites her to reciprocate. After a few seconds, she is invited and then he throws Asimina right into a ballet lift where she splits the legs while her back is arched (this is called a grand jété cambré profonde assis), and then, he makes her land and she goes down the the floor in modern dance stag movements (A stag is a folding of the legs in opposite  directions, which is very common in jazz dance). Then, she

gets up, runs back to stage R.

This was in homage to Margot Fonteyn's pas de deux dances

(or "dance for two", or "duet"), where she was lifted by the lead dancer so many times into positions like the fish dive. Regrettably, no fish dive (which is called pas poisson in French---literally, it means "fish step) poses were done in the show but the grand jeté lift was enough.

Then the dance sequence is repeated several times, sometimes with some variations.

One of the variations was quite comedic is the

"reverse role" variation, where the tall man goes up into his posé, and Asimina pretends to be a male ballet dancer. She approaches, she invites contact with the man, and then she was thinking of lifting him up. She starts but she stops and refuses to lift him in jest....causing a slight laugh in the audience.

PART II

Here, a gray/silver partition permeates stage right, and

focus is on the ballet barre of the studio. Here, Asimina dons the red swan tutu and makes a slightly strict homage to Margot Fonteyn.

A slide projector is used to create something like a sea picture on the south wall as a backdrop, yet it also allows a shadow silouette of Asimina when the projector light shines on her.

The part starts off with Asimina with the ballet barre on the right. Several barre exercises are demonstrated as the music slowly starts----including a

développé (done several times; this is a ballet move where the free leg slides up on the other leg that is already in relévé, or on half-point, and then the free leg is extended out straight to the side so it

is horizontal to the floor), ronds de jambe (leg circles

with the leg straight and usually not letting the toe leave the floor), and various cambré positions (leaning positions with the upper body so you lean forward, or back, or to the side).

Next, she goes away from the partition to do centre work

(so-called because you use the center of the stage to do ballet movements). The swan tutu was the main focus of her

work as the lighting turned semi-dark but allow the brightness of the red tutu to show her great dance skills.

The music is described as mainly white noise with a voice doing some syllabic spoken word, especially she runs around in pas couru en pointe (little walking steps on point or on toes) as she runs around. The bizarre part was when during her pas couru sequence, she seems to tap on every pas couru, a feat not usually seen in lady ballet dancers. That is what makes Asimina so different than even the best female ballet dancers. As she does those running steps in several series of circles on the floor, the music increases

volume as the spoken word voice goes away, leading to continous electronic taps, and as she leaves the stage, the electronic taps (probably for reactionary purposes) continue to the loudest apex....and then, as soon as the music began....the taps suddenly stop.

PART III

Then, a guitarist comes in for his improvised music, as Asimina changes into a jazz dance garb in all black, including leotard tights. Most of the time, the guitar music is improvised, with sudden stops, sudden accelerations, brief runs of various numbers of notes, and a lot of distortion techniques.

This time, she does another solo dance, but much differently this time. There are elements of ballet, but more of a combination of jazz, contemporary, and modern all at the same time.

I am thinking that Asimina was honoring jazz dancer Christy Lane more than Margot Fonteyn, but I also see homages to Debbie Allen and probably Twyla Tharp and Katherine Durham here. She does a lot more floor work in the part, doing various amounts of stunt falls and stag body rolls, and several times, she goes into the "swan" pose on the floor...that is, a common ballet move where one leg is folded and flexed in front or in the back, and the other leg is out in front, straight, and the upper body flexes forward so that the head touches near the toes, and the arms are forward and outstreched, also straight.

In the middle of the dance, she does a arabesque penchée

(or "leaning arabesque"), probably the best one ever that I had seen from any ballet dancer.

The show lasted 54 minutes but it was the best contemporary dance show ever because I had seen a wide variety of dances. Asimina Chremos was not recognizable to me until I saw her in the John Cage Musicircus in Chicago in October 2007, which I myself performed in as a pianist....but after seeing "The Red Swan", now I know why I need to recognize this dancer so highly.

Learning From OJ Simpson’s Conviction on Armed Robbery, Kidnapping, Assault, and Conspiracy Charges at a Las Vegas Hotel

I am a bit saddened that OJ’s freedom was now taken away for good from being in trouble with the law again, and learning from what happened in his downfall made me get inspired to bring you tips so that way you do not end up like what happened to O.J. Simpson – end up in prison.

Especially if you use a conceal-carry firearm (which a lot of jurisdictions allow these days).

I was a former fan of O.J., but when he ended up in the slammer, my days of me being a fan is over. His freedom is over. I don’t want your freedoms to be over like him.

 Basically, the lesson is this---

 1. Even if you carry an official and current conceal carry firearms permit and a FOIC (Firearms Owners’ Identification Card), using your gun with the intent to commit a crime except for self-defense can cause your criminal charges to be escalated from what would be misdemeanors to felonies. Very serious enough!

 2. The Laurie Dann shooting spree, and more particularly, The Columbine High School massacre, caused a widespread response by a lot of U.S. jurisdictions by making tougher penalties related to gun crimes. 

3. Certain crimes committed while using a firearm (except in self-defense) are now punished like those defendants who are convicted of hate crimes. That is, the original offenses that are enhanced to hate-crime status can mean a much stiffer sentence as the sentence will likely be enhanced. For example, in the state of Nevada, certain crimes with a deadly weapon can, upon conviction, cause the original prison sentence to be enhanced by 1-6 years (called “12 to 72 months enhancement” under the penal codes of the state of Nevada, and some of the crimes that O.J Simpson were convicted of got these enhanced sentences)

 4. If OJ and his accomplice were to not have guns, the sentence for both O.J. Simpson and his accomplice would have been much more palpable in 2008…..about 50 percent less severe a prison sentence. I am guessing that O.J. could only face up to 6-8 years in prison (instead of up to 16 years or more).

 5. Remember that undercover police work is a way to help deter would-be criminals from committing felonies and other major crimes, and if you do it, most likely expect to meet up with unsuspecting people with a wire—even if you are not informed that there will be one. And usually, if the person is an FBI informant, they will not tell the criminals that he or she is one before the people who commit the crimes eventually get arrested for. Sadly, Simpson’s robbery trial had very damning evidence—the tapes and the informants with the wire—that caused him to be convicted.

Email marketing and Dealing With Anti-Spam Laws

I am trying to self-teach myself (through watching a lot of YouTube videos) how to do email marketing because as a pianist, composer, arranger, writer, and also the co-founder of Celebration of Joy, Inc. (a non-profit founded in 2014), I realize that good email marketing practices can draw a lot of web traffic as well as email traffic to your domain email name, and create a major boost to your resume.

But I realize that bad email marketing practices, especially when you send emails in bulk, can get one in trouble. Sometimes big trouble in a way that you could be shut down email-wise, criminally and/or civilly fined, and/or be put into the slammer. You could run afoul of the anti-spam laws like CAN-SPAM from the USA (or the "Control and Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing") or CASL from Canada (Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation).

 I realize that such bad practices can lead to mild to extremely painful legal implications and consequences--ranging from being warned of permanent shutdown of your email account from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or ESP (Email Service Provider)--all the way to having your email business or account shut down temporarily or permanently by anti-spam blacklists---all the way to having a knock on the door by an FBI agent and then you are taken away in handcuffs and sent to jail for all of this. When you are flagged as a spammer, and already have a third-party bulk email marketing service that you use (Constant Contact, MailChimp, Mad Mimi, etc.), and you do not do good practices to mitigate these accusations ro avoid being flagged in the future (aka "reported"), it can cause severe damage to you as a email marketer. With this, I classify these implications and consequences into three categories...

1. Mild Penalties
2. Moderate Penalties
3. Severe Penalties

  MILD PENALTIES
1. The ESP will email your with a warning that you will be sanctioned on your email account for bad marketing practices, which usually a shut down of your email temporarily without being on an email blacklist, most often through a suspension of your email account, if you continue spamming.

2. Often, the recipients will warn you individually that you emailed them with the intent to spam them---and often they will report you as such and say that they will take further action on you if you continue to email them without asking first.

 3. The ESP will probably drop your email reputation score 5-10 points.

 Often, you will get these penalties for........

1. Several or more incidences of hard bounces, but not too much.
2. Lots of soft bounces.
 3. Several incidences of low open rates or high bounce rates on your email campaigns.

MODERATE PENALTIES 
1. The ESP can temporarily stop you from sending mass emails or email blasts if you send emails in bulk, especially if you do that using bad email lists (they will usually have very bad SPFs--sender profile formats) or lists from people that you did not get consent by them to send the emails if you do this in bulk. Usually from 7 days to up to 28 days.

 2. The ESP can drop your email sender score (or reputation score) about 30-40 points. 2. The ISP on your own website could place your IP address on a red-flag and you may get a warning from any of the anti-spam companies (after being informed that the IP address was flagged) that if you do not change your practices for the better, they will blacklist you.

 Often, you will get these penalties for... 
1. A moderate amount of hard bounces and not doing everything you can to cut back on them on your email campaigns.
2. Doing email blasts or email bulk sends with outdated email addresses.
3. Sending blasts to 500-1000 recipients where a lot of these email addresses are spoofed or had been red-flagged in the past as emails coming from known spammers.

SEVERE PENALTIES
1. Spamhaus, Barracuda, and other similar DBLs (Domain Block Lists, also known as anti-spam blacklists) can put a domain email address - or even worse - a domain IP address - on a blacklist or two for serious spam violations you do. You get a 100 percent shot of being blacklisted for repeat serious spam violations. If that happens ("blacklisted"), you cannot send email at all, or even use your website at all. Any email that you send when you are blacklisted will head straight to the junk folder or your recipient's spam box--all the time!--even if the emails are lawful to send and even if you have permission from the recipients to send it---Every time. When you try to open up your own website, you realize that you got blocked and you cannot open the site. I am imagining a lot of online email marketers and businesses who ended up bankrupt or disbanded or even homeless when they get blacklisted by DBLs. Trying to get off a blacklist so you can do email again is not easy for most of the DBLs that you face. In most cases you have to petition the DBL or DBLs that you were accountable for the violations and you are doing better practices--this is the only way usually to get yourself off a blacklist. But in some DBLs, it is not guaranteed if you try to get yourself off one.
(Blacklisting is one of the several legal remedies under CAN-SPAM.)

 2. Authorities like the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) will send you mail that you will not like at all and extremely abhor--a notice that you are going to have to pay a very heavy fine---$16,000, for each violation of the CAN-SPAM act. Also known as a summons. If you are a Canadian business owner who uses email marketing and you seriously violate CASL, expect bad news from the Canadian authorities when you get a civil summons that requires you to pay up to a maximum $10,000,000 fine in Canadian dollars for violating that law. I don't know about some of the other ways other countries punish with their anti-spam laws but I do have a bit of a hunch that the consequences are going to be similarly or near-similarly strong.

 3. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) also can be involved--as well as the FTC, and you will get an arrest warrant and you have days to turn yourself in to police for serious spam violations. You may even get a summons to appear in criminal court without being arrested, but still, being summoned by the FBI is extremely serious. You get convicted criminally as a spammer on a violation that will send you to federal prison, and you will have a stain on your rap sheet especially after you get out of federal prison. A felony conviction will mean that employers will see this as public record--such criminal records are going to be difficult to efface or expunge--and that means most of these employers might disqualify you from the job that you love or desire--even if it is not a security-sensitive job---through all of those pre-employment background checks that are commonly done by employers.

 4. Finally, the email reputation score will certainly go down 70 to 80 points, maybe even up to 90 points, so you get something like a reputation score of 5 to 10, or 1 to 5, or even 0. If your sender score goes down to 0, it is like getting the lowest point on a grade of F in college. It can ruin your future or even your life! Your reputation score in your domain email address is a bit like your FICO credit score. 90-100 is a great sender score, 80-89 is good, 70-79 is average, 60-69 is fair, and 59 or lower is poor. 

You get these penalties by a lot of these "no-no" practices that are really against the law, but here are some of them...

 1. Using dictionary attacks by way of an automated program to steal these email addresses (and even their passwords) in order to make your email lists.
2. Harvesting thousands of email addresses from unclean lists in order to build your email lists.
3. Harvesting email addresses without telling those recipients how you got these email addresses in order to build your email lists.
4. Excessive incidences of not honoring opt-outs or unsubscribes in your email campaigns.
 5. A master load of incidences of hard bounces on your email campaigns and not doing good-faith methods to keep these hard bounces low.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR EMAIL CAMPAIGNS FROM RUNNING AFOUL OF THE ANTI-SPAM LAWS 

Well, basically, I found out that the CAN-SPAM law is a good way to go for me to help me follow the anti-spam rules. Most of the requirements in this anti-spam law I can get.......

  1. You cannot lie in the subject line. That is, your subject heading in the line has to correlate to the email body message that relates to it. If not, you are in trouble.

  2. You cannot use a deceptive email address.
Generally you steer away from trouble if you make an email address from a reputable ESP like Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail, or Google (or Gmail) which require you to make a username and password for your made email address. Then those ESPs do several required protocols (DKIM, DNS Feedback loops, reverse DNS lookup, etc.) to make sure that the email address IS the email address that you send to recipients--that is, a real email address, not an unreal one.

3. To avoid the risk of recipients opening up pornography where they are not allowed to be shown such, CAN-SPAM requires that emails that do have pornography have "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT" in caps and in quotation marks--in the subject line. 

4. If the email is promotional, the law requires that such emails are an advertisement. At the end of the email, you should say something like this....

 "This is an advertisement from (name of company)."

 This is a simple way to do it but there are variations on how you can do it.

 5. Promotional emails require that you have a physical website that you can be reached (and an email address), or a physical address. 

Then there are the more tricky parts of the law.

 6. You need to have express permission from the email recipient or recipients to send promotional emails to the recipient or recipients. 

I realize that it is hard to do this manually, and the best way out of this is to use a third-party email service that will do a double opt-in process (common now for permission-based email), such as Constant Contact, MNB (Mail Newsletter Builder), or MailChimp. They will have protocols that will do the permissions for you so that the recipients can sign up for your email lists. Double opt-in is where those third-party email services do a background check on those email addresses who want to subscribe with permission to see if they are fake, scam, or deceptive addresses before the emails go through to finish the permission process. If the email addresses are bad, those third parties automatically jettison such emails off the list ASAP.

 7. You need to tell the email recipient or recipients a way to opt-out of your emails. (In other words, "unsubscribe'.)

 This is probably easier to do under CAN-SPAM than trying to get permission from the recipients. Opt-out means that the recipient decides to not want any more emails from you. That's basically it. I could do this sentence in my email campaigns, like so:

If you at anytime you want to opt-out or unsubscribe from this email list, you can contact me directly through email and I will get you off the list in 6 hours."

 I understand that under this section of the law, the opt-out needs to work for 30 days. Third-party email services often do this for me more easily than I can do on my own. But to make sure that I honor the opt-outs, I can write down something like my own email blacklist....a list of email addresses of recipients who want to opt-out so I do not accidentally send these emails to them again.

Anti-spam laws, especially CAN-SPAM and also CASL, are not going to be easy for me. I know these laws are very serious business and I need to follow them. 

Do you have any other pointers on how I can be a better email marketer? Please put on the comments below.

Thanks.

What Would I Experience if I Were To Go To Studio 54 During The Disco Craze?

From about age 5 to age 9 (this was from 1976 to 1980),

I missed disco, and its correlated discotheques. This was because I was

too young to go to such disco clubs at that time.


So I had to imagine being in the heart of this craze. After

researching on the hottest disco nightclub in the United States,

Studio 54, I was imagining myself waiting in line to get into the

club. Learned that the owner (who was also the doorman at that time)

made up his own rules on who can get in…and who cannot. I think that

the doorman will at first say that I will not be allowed in because of

my African-American race, but my very curly hair—although I was not in

a full-fledged Afro hairdo—would make the owner reconsider his

rejection, and I would be let in.


What would I see? A sea of colored moving lights, and a sea of colors

in the club patrons wearing platform shoes, three-piece suits, and

a lot of casual garb. Learning from what Steve Dahl mentioned when

he hated disco, I would also have seen ladies don plenty and plenty

of jewelry—the garb that Steve Dahl did not like in the disco craze.

I would have mind the jewelry. I was not into the drugs they had in

the place so I would stay away from that…I would instead focus on

hitting on the right woman or women to dance with, and eventually I

would imagine finding a lady to dance to that is almost like Karen

Lynn Gorney in the movie “Saturday Night Fever”, even if the real

Karen was not there.  I would see a very loose but controlled chaos of

dancers either dancing the line hustle, or doing freestyle disco

dancing (letting it all out), or of course, do one of the popular

partner disco dances at that time

made famous by the band Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony…yes, the

hustle.

Six Flags Great America Memories---The Rides I Have Ridden On in the 1980s

I was in Great America several times in the 1980s, so as I try to remember the times I rode the rides, I can think of memories of some of them….

WHITEWATER RAMPAGE

Well, it is supposed to be the water ride at that theme park that would bring us more thrills than the already-installed Log Flume that I rode before in Six Flags. It was announced on TV that a ride called the Whitewater Rampage was going to be on, and even with a slight fear of water, I decided to take on the Rampage. After I got through a rather long line, I see a warning message that said “You are going to get wet…probably soaked…after riding this ride.” I knew I was going to get wet, but I don’t know at that point how much. I was sitting with about 6-7 people in a sort of saucer module with an outer skin of yellow and seats with seat beat restraints in black. The ride is innocent enough in the begging with the gentle whitewater bumps, but then, the saucer picks up speed gradually in the middle of the ride. I got lashed in the back at least once with a bit of water. Then, the surprise comes after I got through halfway through the ride, after going through a rather long tunne….exploding geysers fire in the air up to 40 feet high, and I was about 25 feet away from it when it fired. They released about ½ to ¾ gallons of water and when they dropped all of that water on me, I got a partial brunt—ending up being wet with about 1/3 gallons of water. Then the grand finale of the ride was the climax, the module goes down into more whitewater bumps that were larger and bigger, and I got lashed 2 more times with water, and on the last bump, I think I got a direct hit from behind by the water….and then, it was all over. I had an extra set of clothes to change after I got off the ride. THE

LOG FLUME 
The ride seems to be in 4 phases. I had been on the Flume twice, so I can remember:

Phase 1
You go across the first sinuous curve and you are taken up with the first ascent of about 75 feet, feeling a shaky wooden-like feel even though this is not a wooden rollercoaster. Must be steel cables doing the work.

Phase 2
Then, I feel the light drop and then it is a sinuous ride with left banks, right banks, and then left banks again, and then, a slight drop of 15 feet gets you a bit wet (a prelude to the grand finale of the ride), and then, you end up in a new straightaway.

Phase 3
Another slight drop of about 10 feet gets you down and gets you slightly more wet again, and then a few more short straightaways and a few more banks. At that point, I feel like a log but I know that there is another final big climb to come.

Phase 4 – The Grand Finale
This challenged me a little bit—because I was a bit afraid of heights but I was able to deal with it---the final ascent, the second of the ascents, as big as the first, gets you as high as about 85 feet, then you go straight for about 15 more feet. Then I see what is coming below—the big drop with the great pool of water below to splash me at, and then I braced myself for the drop that would happen at speeds as high as 50 mph, I placed my head down forward as the drop happened, punctuated by a mule bump in the middle (about 40 feet), and then, I can hear the great splash, and I got sideswiped with a splash of water. Then I raised my head and I found out that part of my legs and my back of the shirt got wet, but I knew that the ride was over.

1995 Lecture Notes from English 260 - The Black Arts Movement

LIMITATIONS TO THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT Christianity--is considered a religion to keep Blacks in their place because of.... * worldly emphasis (not direct)--not action * Eurocentric bias (the casting of God as a white man * representation of the Black church as inwardly focused on self-perpetuation * representing the Black church for only its own perpetuation (lack of environment) The blues was rejected for advocating a resolution and accepting it. The Nation of Islam (NOI) countervail any Christian influence because..... * Islam was a religion native to Africa for Christianity was foreign and Europeanized * Islam was never connected to slavery or slave trade * Islamic minds would have minds in orderly structure * Islam ministered Africans who were not of the Christian faith who were criminals * The N.O.I. had an economic program that led to empowerment. * Islam helps Muslims underpin the Islamic conversion from other religions. The Black Power Movement died because...... * intervention and disruptive tendencies of the American Government to stop Black political groups such as the BPP (Black Panther Party) * the arrest(s) and scare tactics (e.g., Cointelpro and other counter-insurgency tactics) that drove away Black leaders from the country or from freedom to jail. * the war in Vietnam--black males were drafted to the highest because of their severe belligerency-- and it led to political impotence. Blacks died more than Whites in the war in Vietnam. * Riots in Kent State and Jackson State universities were also caught in the middle. There was no sustain political or artistic Black movement after 1973, even after the Vietnam ended. Reasons... * Integration helped--discrimination laws were enforced * Sharing of space--now allowed a certain aspect of Blacks to integrate with whites. They could also live in various integrated committees in a different model or perspective of African-Americans who witnesses to leadership points. If blacks come through in white places with more resources then it will be a leadership that would be much more stable.