Right v. Privilege: The Cost of Higher Education

Greetings all!

This post concerns an issue which affects me personally, and which I likely will become even more invested in during the coming months. This issue is that of the costs surrounding the pursuit of a higher education in the United States of America. We know they are significantly high; what matters is why, and what we can do to change that. This week’s quote comes from Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont who has described himself as a democratic socialist, the only one in over six decades. I typically find more ground with him than most politicians in America these days.

The cost of an undergraduate education has been rising for decades, and has only been rising more sharply in the past few years. We can already see that the average cost of education at a public university is over 13,000 dollars each year, while the cost of attending a private college is more than double that price at over 32,000 dollars each year. This does not even factor in costs beyond tuition, room and board. Students often purchase fairly expensive meal plans at college, and must put in large sums of cash to get textbooks each semester. There are bountiful ways for a college or university to charge more money for a student to attend, and these costs will only be compounded further as time passes if we do nothing.

If certain conditions were met, these rising costs would not matter. If average GDP per capita and household wealth had been rising alongside average American salaries, these numbers would not matter nearly as much. If the ratio between financial aid and loans for education had not been increasing so rapidly or had been decreasing to a more stable level, these rising costs would mean even less. If these conditions were met, every average American family could afford to send their children to most every school without having to suffer enormous financial hardship, or put that hardship on the shoulders of their kids. However, none of these conditions have been met in recent years.

Unfortunately, the average American GDP per capita (PPP) is about 49,000 dollars, and this number swings on a pendulum quite immediately in differing regions. The median household income is about 50,000 dollars, an 8 percent drop since 2007. The American per capita personal income is about 40,000 dollars. This too varies by state, with Mississippi having the lowest median personal income of about 31,000 dollars. The average cost of living in the United States has only been rising in the past years, to about 27,000 dollars each year, and that cost cuts out the possible costs of marriage/divorce, college/student loans, credit debt, and retirement all together. If all the possible yearly costs are averaged properly and added together, the total comes to about 40,000 dollars. That’s quite a bit of cash for a man or woman who doesn’t own their home permanently, has never married or divorced and is not raising a family of any kind. This is especially frightening, to know that the cost of living and median personal income are at about the exact same cost. That means a person making 40,000 dollars a year cannot spend anything on luxuries if they fulfill the average costs of necessities. This situation is especially scary for those people making the minimum wage, set at 7 dollars and 25 cents per hour. At an average of 2080 hours of work for any American per year, these people make about 15,000 dollars each year. This is far less than the average cost of living, even when many of the pieces of that cost are cut away. These people will have to skimp on many essentials, like food, just to survive in America today, let alone afford college for themselves or their children. The worst thing among them all is the amount of financial aid being given to students on average: just 12,000 dollars. Not particularly frightening for public university students until you realize the majority of that is made up in the form of student or parent loans, whose costs will rise and compound exponentially each year. Just imagine how much worse that is for private university students and parents.

By now, I’ve established that the costs of college versus how much Americans can afford are far too high. In fact, it’s plain absurd how bad it can get; some university tuition costs alone are more than entire household incomes each year. How are students expected to be able to pay these amounts without wallowing in unmanageable debt? The answer, in many cases, is that they are not. The goal of most private universities is to pull a profit, so if a student can’t pay their debt for a long time the college will continually collect more and more money from them through interest, fees, and penalties. Meanwhile, fresh-out-of-college employment rates and average salaries are even lower than the national total averages, and this has persisted for years. All of this equates to students and parents suffering for years on end just to achieve an education through undergraduate school. This can become doubly worse for those pursuing graduate school, as the extra years pile on the costs even further.

Let me establish why this is wrong in the first place. It’s easy to suggest that colleges should feel free to charge however much money they want for students in order to turn a profit; this is the free-market, so they should be able to function the same way as a business, right? Nope, not even close. You see, this would only be true if education were a privilege and not a right, and if less-costly yet equally as academically honorable institutions existed across the nation. None of these cases are true. To address the latter, we all know the big name schools across the country: Rice, Caltech, Berkeley, New York, Boston, Chapel Hill, Chicago, the Ivy League, etc. Not only are all of these schools highly expensive for most students and significantly difficult to get into, but many are concentrated on the eastern or western portions of the United States. Meanwhile, there are a good lot of students in the Midwestern states that would have to travel halfway across the country to attend a highly competitive school, let alone afford the costs associated with such travel. Therefore no, there are not enough competitive and affordable universities across the nation for colleges to charge these enormous sums.

The former point, that education is a right, is one I must elaborate more uniquely on. Education is clearly not a privilege; if it was, elementary, middle, and high schools would all charge tuition. But they don’t; all primary education is publicly funded by taxpayer dollars. True, private options exist, though comparatively few students attend these schools for results that are not always better than the public option. However, it seems our country values education as a right only up until the age of majority, because at that point a good portion of education is cut off from public funding. Even public universities still charge fairly ludicrous sums for students’ tuition, room and board. This is, frankly, both obscene and absurd. Why should education not be a right? If education is a privilege, only those with money and connections can afford higher education. This forces the poor and middle class to either abandon hope of ever getting an education and a good job, or forces them into the army so they can hope to afford college at a later date. Either way, we end up with an inevitable plutocracy in which the rich completely control the nation’s wealth, politics, and educational institutions, a wildly unstable situation that hurts the majority.

Education is a right, up to and through tertiary education; why should people be forcibly restricted from pursuing their dreams by wealth? If education is a right, then it should therefore be publicly funded in absolutely all cases; this means that even private universities should be willing to give in to public funding, and public funding needs to be increased significantly. Let’s take a look at nations in the European Union, which value education as a right in full. Most students in these nations either pay tuition close to just 1,000 dollars, or none at all in several cases. Imagine that, paying nothing for college and still getting a fairly competitive academic value out of it. Students are paying whopping loads less for their education in Europe, and they still pump out a large deal of Nobel Prize winners. The E.U. is still holding onto a very high standard of living and median wages, and has a very highly educated population in most every member state. I’m sure you can see the disparity, and the comparatively easy solution to the crisis. Simply make college a public institution, charge more on taxes, and make the costs of higher education much lower much quicker for students from all economic groups. It pays off in the long run to not have our incoming work-seekers laden with debt immediately.

That concludes my piece this week, and I hope I’ve provided all the information necessary to bolster my argument. I am always open for response here in the comments section, or on my email at zerospintop@live.com. As always, I can be contacted through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Steam, and DeviantArt. I have also recently opened myself a Tumblr account by the name of KnoFear through which I can be contacted; I will likely be posting links to my work there as well. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off.

Utmost Respect: Opposition to Vegetarianism

Greetings all!

This post comes delayed from its original set date mostly due to school work again, and for that I apologize. I've also been playing around with the style of this blog and its format, and have been considering some possible changes to make the site more visually appealing and navigable. However, I did intend to write this out before, so it does need to be said. I am not a vegetarian, nor do I think I ever will be. I also oppose vegetarianism on various grounds. For some reason, this seems to be an "oddity," for a leftist to not be or at least support vegetarianism. But here, I intend to explain why, and likely gain the ire of my fellow leftist colleagues along the way. But I'm willing to take those blows for now.

First, I must qualify my argument. I do not absolutely oppose all vegetarianism. If you are not eating meat strictly for religious reasons (if you are, say, Hindu) then I do accept that and would not argue against such a practice. If vegetarianism is somehow a part of your culture or traditions, I will not keep you from practicing vegetarianism in that case either. In fact, I'd be very much interested in learning about such a culture that I have not heard of before. I also am in favor of bettering our treatment towards animals, specifically those which we eat most like chickens and cows. We should not line chickens up in cages and give them hormones and do all sorts of horrible and immoral things in order to gain profit or create a more "appealing" product. I also believe we should not excessively hunt any animals, and that hunting should be primarily for sustenance rather than for sport. If you kill a deer in the woods, you should eat it, whether you very much want to or not. You should also be using as much of the dead body as you can; waste not want not, and all that jazz. We should not be killing endangered animals as well.

However, if you are simply vegetarian because you don't want animals dying so you can eat, I don't condone that. Let's start with the facts, shall we?

Animals have populations in the wild which are hopefully in a stable size. In order for such a stable size to be maintained, there must be a food source which also must remain stable. There must be a birth rate which combats the rate of death and predation, but does not cause excessive growth of that animal's population. However, human intervention or the lack thereof in certain animal populations can very drastically help or harm said population, and this cannot be avoided due to the extreme amount of space which humans have occupied at this point in history. Take, for example, the deer population around Maryland. Here, there are so many deer it often seems ridiculous, and they have become monstrously overpopulated. On the surface, it sounds like a good thing for an animal's population to be high and rising, but the opposite is true. Overpopulation often leads to severe competition among a species for resources, leaving many animals to starve and die in horrid conditions. There are many of these animals starving and suffering because of this overpopulation. 

Now let's say that we stop eating cows and chickens. These populations are already enormous due to our breeding of them, and so removing them from our diets would also end the only source of predation for both of these groups. We would instantly see overpopulation and starvation, making the quick deaths we see on the farm seem gentle compared to the suffering a starving cow will go through for days on end before it dies. This provides us with a good reason for not cutting meat out of our diets quickly; by doing so, we would be doing the animals we are trying to help a huge disservice, and would thereby be treating them even more poorly than we currently do. If we ever had to absolutely cut out meat from our diets, it would likely take a very long time and would not be a very cost effective process, and would also be met with fiery resistance. All in all, the effort put into saving these animals would not be worth our time and would likely endanger their populations in the process. Animal populations follow a graph very similar to an economy; if the population retains a steady process of growth and death, it will remain safe. However, if the population explodes in growth too quickly, it will crash and burn in a very unhealthy fashion.

Now, in the case of hunting animals, some things are quite different. Hunting for deer is not quite as widespread as is the butchering of cows, so I have to treat the situation differently. I'll be taking deer hunting in Maryland as my example once more. As I stated earlier, the deer population in Maryland is simply enormous for the state's relatively small size, and as such a set of hunting regulations are in place for hunting these deer. As one can see, there is no limit to exactly how many deer may be taken per day, as long as they are in season and the hunting occurs during permitted hours. The main reason why Maryland has so many deer is because the state used to regulate hunting more strictly, and eventually the deer population exploded years ago. As such, these regulations were dropped in order to better control the population and prevent the rampant spread of disease among the deer. However, there are simply not enough hunters to bring the deer population down to its original levels, and while starvation among the deer has been mostly conquered through hunting, I doubt that it doesn't happen anymore. I'm sure you can see my point by now, in that hunting can prevent populations of certain animals which are prone to excessive growth from exploding and damaging the species as a whole. While hunting may not be the entire solution to such problems, it is an important part of it. And lastly, to hunt these animals and then not eat them would be entirely wasteful; plus, there would be far more deer corpses for people to deal with. 

And now, we come to the secondary portion of my argument, which is more grounded in my political leanings and my treatment of other cultures. Being vegetarian, at least in a first-world country simply because you don't want to hurt animals, is a very privileged thing to do. Let me explain. In many parts of the world, like the Amazon Basin for example, meat is very much a part of the culture that has not changed for a long part of history. Let's say you, a vegetarian, decides to visit said region and are offered a meal which contains meat by your Brazilian hosts. If you deny the offering on the basis of "I don't eat meat," well that is frankly like slapping your hosts in the face. Not only are you turning down their generosity without a good explanation from their point of view, but you are also essentially telling them that their culture is a barbaric one and you are superior to them.

"But what if I never go to a place where meat is the culture?" I'm sure some of you are asking that. You might not be insulting people straight to their faces, but you are still indirectly making a mockery of how many people choose to live their lives. You are also making a mockery of how many people are forced to live their lives. In many countries, meat in the diet is not just a part of the culture, but it is a necessity. It is often the case that without meat, significant portions of the human population could not survive or prosper at all. I am certain that a starving man will not turn down a burger because it is "cruel" or "immoral." He will scarf it down hungrily, and thank you with all of his heart. Do you know why? Because that man does not have the privilege of choice in his diet, and therein lies my most direct qualm with vegetarianism. Choosing to cut meat from your diet, choosing to say "I can do this, so I will," is a very improper thing to do that can be seen as very insulting. Most vegetarians and vegans live in countries where the ability to cut meat out of your diet is easy. America, for example, is a fairly rich country with tons of food options beyond meat that won't cost much. It is comparatively easy to be a vegetarian here than, say, in Ethiopia. Just because you can be a vegetarian without drastically changing your life, does not mean you should. And just because you provide a righteous justification for your means, those means do not justify your ends. By becoming a vegetarian or vegan, you are shoving your lifestyle into the face of others and declaring it to be the superior way of life. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not be looked upon with severe ire by many of my fellows.

That is all for this two-part post, and I hope I've made my explanation concise for all of you. Once again, I encourage comments here to provide feedback for me. I am available through my email at zerospintop@live.com, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, DeviantArt, and Steam. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off.

These Red Lines: Our World of Cultural Divisions

Greetings all!

If you’re here, you’re likely wondering why I did not post last weekend. For reasons mostly relating to my workload at school, I have decided to simply do a double post this weekend instead of following the normal format. However, this blog will follow its regular format when nothing else gets in the way. Strangely enough, these two posts will likely have nothing in common, but bear with me. This post was inspired by a one-panel comic I saw months ago but which I can no longer find myself. It depicted two women, both looking at each other and the differences they saw on the outside. One of these women was dressed in a skimpy bikini and sunglasses with bleached blonde hair, holding a small purse with an even smaller dog on the inside, and sandals on her feet. The other woman wore a traditional Islamic piece of clothing which covered most all of her body, from head to toe. Very little could be seen in the comic, at least beyond her eyes. However, both women thought the exact same thing: “What a horribly oppressive, male-dominated culture must rule over her life.” The comic speaks the truth; our cultures divide us so, because we often have trouble viewing anything with a different perspective than our own. As such, we cannot see eye to eye, and this can cause serious issues both on the domestic and foreign policy stage. I intend to show why culture matters so much, and what can be done about it. This week’s quote comes from President Barack Obama, a man whose views may be too centrist for my tastes but has been no worse a president than I expected.

Anyway, I feel it necessary I explain the comic I just described for those who don’t understand it. It’s easy for any Western citizen to see why the Islamic woman may appear to be oppressed by men. This is especially true for nations which force women to dress conservatively such as Iran. We see it as stifling freedom of expression and choice of dress, something we can easily take for granted in a country which only keeps us from dressing too little (and even those restrictions are small). We see a society entirely different from our own, one where sometimes women are not allowed to drive or leave the house without a man, in the case of Saudi Arabia at least. We see a woman that longs to dress as she pleases, and we think how horrible it must be for her there. But then we always forget to take a look from her perspective towards ourselves. If you’re born in Saudi Arabia or Iran, chances are you’ll grow to appreciate and enjoy the values these countries espouse if your personal situation doesn’t suck. This is especially true of those who are very religious. While we see the hijab and think of misogyny, many can see it as a form of protection towards a woman’s modesty. Many religious women in this part of the world view conservative dress as a way to prevent men from objectifying them, a value which we simply don’t share because it is not a part of our culture.

Our culture is a very liberal one, and I don’t mean politically liberal. I mean that we have much freedom of choice in our clothing and speech, and we very much take that to heart. Women are objectified constantly in our media, written and digital, so we are desensitized to it. It happens so often, that we are now used to it. However, if you were to stick a religious Iranian man in New York, I bet you his eyes would cringe and he would turn away upon seeing some of the billboards there. If he were to watch just about any successful movie in America, I’m certain he’d be unhappy at the amount of sexual content, whether simply referenced to or directly shown. I myself hate how much sex permeates our society, but it’s not something I can change. It is a part of our culture now, and it would take years and the collective will of everyone in order to be changed. Therefore, it will never happen.

However, there are some drawbacks to such a society. Because women are objectified so much, it becomes very hard to define when a line has been crossed. This is why sexist jokes pop up on television so very often; whether directed towards men or women, it will almost never go “too far” in our collective opinion. If it’s any consolation, we know that we at least have a line we don’t cross, and it showed when Todd Akin espoused his comments about “legitimate rape” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/20/us/politics/todd-akin-provokes-ire-with-legitimate-rape-comment.html?_r=0). Unfortunately, the very fact that our elected representatives have sunk this low and lower should be a good indication of how poorly our society can reflect on us. Even though we almost unanimously directed hate against him after his statements, this doesn’t change the fact that there are likely many people out there who agree with him, logic and science be damned. And we must realize this: that only in a culture like our own could something like this happen. We might not have the highest amount of rape in the world (that title belongs to the Democratic Republic of the Congo), but we do get hundreds of thousands of victims of sexual assault each and every year here. And I’m certain that making sexism a joke definitely won’t help us to make those numbers go down. So the next time you’re out in public in a revealing outfit, with eyes on you, remember this. The thoughts going through people’s minds about your outfit likely aren’t thoughts which you want to hear, but the fact of the matter is that our culture is mostly okay with those thoughts (unless they’re about rape, of course).

Cultural differences extend beyond our choice of clothing, and can have a much more pronounced effect on our policy towards other nations. Let’s take Russia as an example this time. For Americans, Russia is an example of a government system we don’t want, even though communism has been removed as the status quo there. Russia still exhibits a government which gives stronger power to the executive branch and where corruption and cronyism are a common thing under Putin. We look at such a way of life and wretch, despising the thought of such little freedom. But many Russians don’t see it this way. Unlike Saudi Arabia and Iran, I do have some contact with people in the world’s largest country, and I am given some perspective of why Putin still receives wide support there. Russian culture and society has very much become used to powerful rulers over the years of the past, and these ways have not changed much today. Having a strong central power which keeps Russia afloat can be seen as more important to Russians than having an absolutely free society. Having a working and growing competitive economy can be seen as more important than having a competitive electoral process. It’s no secret that Putin has a death grip on power in the Kremlin, but as long as Russians don’t see their country spiral into authoritarian economic depression, it’s unlikely he’ll be yanked from his position. But this is why we can’t understand how the protests in Russia prior to his election not so long ago didn’t become nationwide; we can’t imagine living in a place where freedom isn’t a top priority, and this is why we were still disappointed when he won the election. We may see freedom and electoral cleanliness as being incredibly important, but the same can’t be said for Russia, at least not yet. While opposition to the current Russian model is anything but small, it would take quite a change for the entire thing to be flipped to a model like our own.

Meanwhile, there are likely many Russians looking outwards towards us. Many of them likely had no idea why any of us would be so upset that Putin became president; sure, they understand the argument that it’s not an entirely free electoral process. But the thing is, a good amount of Russians just don’t care that it isn’t. Many would rather see Russia prosper economically and educationally than see one person voted out of power to satisfy a sometimes-ally country. This is a reason for our tension; what we can’t understand, we attack. We do this out of fear or hate, but either way the result is the same. Neither side gets what it wants, and we end up bickering over small things that should never get in the way of international progress.

You may be wondering why all of this matters, if as I have said culture and values are notoriously difficult to change. If it would take decades for us to change, then why worry about it? If problems over cultural divisions are bound to occur, then what is the point of my argument at all? My answer is as follows. While it is true that we cannot change our own culture and values quickly or properly, we can certainly change how we view other cultures and the values they espouse. It’s not easy, but I invite all of you to try it. Any time you see an issue pop up in a nation other than your own and you develop an opinion on it, try viewing it through the eyes of a native in the country in question. For example, look at France and its ban on wearing religious clothing (http://articles.cnn.com/2004-01-17/world/france.headscarves_1_muslims-protest-ban-religious-symbols-hijab?_s=PM:WORLD). I bet it’s hard to why people would protest such a ban, but think about from their perspective. Their religious expression is at stake because of the values of a society not entirely their own. Is such a ban justified by values different than those the law applies to? Think about it.

That is all for now, and once again you are encouraged to comment here with your thoughts. My email at zerospintop@live.com is always open, along with my Facebook, Google+, DeviantArt, Steam, and Twitter. Good night, and this is KnoFear, signing off. 

Napoleon's Triumph: Opposition to Monarchies

Greetings all!

This post concludes the second portion of my closer to September, and focuses on an international issue in lieu of a domestic one, which was covered yesterday. I’ve been saving this topic for a while, because I wanted to build up a reader base before I made a move on this. And now, I have enough people reading that I can feel safe posting this without receiving overwhelming amounts of hate. I oppose monarchies wholeheartedly, and a good portion of my readers live in countries which practice such systems; this is why I’ve been holding off. Now that a good majority of my readers are not monarchical subjects, I can release my tirade.

There are two general forms of monarchy in the modern world. The first kind is the one most of us are familiar with, and that is the powerless monarchy. These monarchies are characterized by kings/queens who possess very few actual powers over their countries and exhibit little role beyond simply being public figures. Examples of such monarchies are most common in Europe, for example the United Kingdom or Spain. The other kind of monarchy is the strong monarchy, monarchies characterized by complete rule by the royal family with no intermediaries as to who runs the nation. This monarchical type is more common in Africa and Asia, for example Morocco or Jordan. I oppose both types, although for different reasons.

It is much easier to make a case in opposition of the former type of monarchy, and in order to make my case I’ll be using the United Kingdom as my subject (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html). For those not entirely familiar with the British governance system, it works as such. The legislature is made up of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, a parliament with a higher and lower house respectively. The executive is held chiefly by the Prime Minister and the ruling monarch, at this moment David Cameron and Queen Elizabeth II respectively. And lastly, as of 2009 the Supreme Court of the U.K. works as the judicial. The parliament creates laws, which are passed and enforced through the executive branch. Here is the only place where the British monarch appears to take part: all laws must be given royal assent. However, because any monarch must appear impartial to politics, most all laws are given assent whether the monarch opposes them at heart or not. The monarch and cabinet are formally appointed by the monarch to form the executive branch, however the prime minister often chooses the cabinet members and the monarch typically respects these choices.

By now, you can see how small the role of the British monarch truly is. Queen Elizabeth II certainly is not creating laws, and she is not enforcing them; she is not chief executive, as Cameron is the one with the power to do that. She does not exhibit overwhelming influence over the cabinet, at least not anymore; at this point, the cabinet choice has become far more centered on the prime minister. But then, why abolish the monarch? If it’s not hurting anyone, there is no reason to remove it, correct? Alas, if only this were true. The monarchy directly hurts every single one of its subjects by simple value of its existence: it has been estimated to cost taxpayers 202 million pounds per year (http://republic.org.uk/What%20we%20want/In%20depth/Royal%20finances/index.php). Think about how much wealth that is. Hundreds of millions of dollars, which could be used to better an economy being bitten in the ass by austerity. That money could be used to ensure damaging cuts don’t have to be made, which could keep the unemployed and other vulnerable members of society from being put at serious risk. Alternatively, that wealth could be used as a stimulus to bolster a nation which hasn’t been doing all that great for the past couple of years. Oh, and that wealth isn’t all going to the queen; some of it goes to the rest of the royal family, who do literally nothing in the governmental processes at all except wait to usurp the throne. These people are getting paid more per year than Mitt Romney, and are doing even less. If any person fits the bill of being a “leech” in American conservative terms, it is the members of any royal family which exudes little power but takes in huge amounts of money. Since these people effectively do nothing, nothing should be spent on them. Better yet, end the monarchy entirely, thereby removing a dead weight.

The second form of monarchy is one I oppose on different grounds, but equally as strong. These kinds of monarchies allow no room for democracy in their governments, and I’ll be taking Saudi Arabia as an example. In the country which uses the Qur’an as its constitution, there is little semblance of freedom in the government. The king and his family exert complete control over the legislative and executive processes within the country, only giving any power to the religious authority of the ulema, a force for ultra-conservatism in a nation where women already have trouble showing their faces or driving. Such is the cornerstone of my opposition; I believe that people should have an influence over their nation, and the easiest way for this to occur is through the allowance of, at the very least, a republic. Any nation with that many people deserves to elect those that rule it, especially when such an opportunity could be a drastic opportunity for improvement of life. The royal family here also takes in exorbitant amounts of wealth as well, giving another good reason to expunge the monarchy (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/28/wikileaks-saudi-royal-wel_n_829097.html). Obviously, you can see why my explanation here is shorter; it is much easier to see why absolute monarchies must be scrapped out of necessity. This form of governance should have died with Napoleon Bonaparte years ago; the fact it still exists is sickening.

That is all for September, and I hope I’ve given good reasoning towards my point of view. I also hope I haven’t offended any friends living under constitutional monarchies too much, but they’ll likely understand. If you’d like to comment about this, feel free to do so using anonymity if you must. Other than that, I can be primarily contacted through my email zerospintop@live.com. And of course, my accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, DeviantArt and Steam are always good places to find me. And so, this is KnoFear, signing off.