20. April 2009 by student.

If you look at the big picture, you realize that the pirates off the Somali coast are more of a nuisance than a problem. Estimates are that 25,000 to 30,000 ships per year transit the Gulf of Aden (headed for the Suez Canal) or the east coast of Somalia. The bulk, of course, go through Suez. The successful hijackings over a multi-year period have been very low in comparison. In 2007, for instance, there were 12 successful hijackings.

The area of ocean in which these events take place cover approximately a million square miles.  Obviously the pirates can pick and choose where to strike while the navies of the world can only react and hope they are close enough to prevent the hijacking. That was demonstrated quite clearly in the latest hijacking of the US ship in which Capt. Phillips was taken hostage. It took hours for the USS Bainbridge to arrive on scene and the rescue was only effected because the skiffs the pirates had used had been destroyed and they were forced to use a lifeboat.

20 countries are now concentrating naval assets within the area, most concentrated in the Gulf of Aden. A coalition of nations commanded by a US admiral constitute Task Force 151 which is strictly an anti-piracy task force. TF 151 operates in the Gulf. China and Russia have also committed naval assets to the task but do so outside TF 151. They coordinate with the TF but only escort their country’s flagged ships.

With the amount of traffic which transits the area, it is obvious that no navy has the assets to escort all of the ships. But there is a tool through which the TF can coordinate its efforts and ensure those ships which are most likely to be attacked have a safe passage. One of those tools is a website. There vessels transiting the area can register their vessel and alert the TF of their time of arrival in the area in which hijacking is most likely. There are also tips for the masters of vessels transiting the area, maritime intelligence reports and alerts.

Obviously with that number of ships transiting the area, some are more susceptable to attack than others. What are the pirates looking for. According to Admiral Terry McKnight, the TF 151 commander, they’re looking for ships traveling under 15 knots and with a low freeboard with aids boarding. As Adm. McKnight says, those sorts of ships seem to scream “pirate, me, pirate me”. If the TF knows ships which fit this template are going to be transiting the region, they can arrange to group them with other ships, track their movement and arrange for that movement at a time when the pirates are less likely to be out hunting.

The pirates have also adapted their tactics, especially off the eastern shore in the Indian Ocean. As shipping has moved further and further off shore to avoid the skiffs employed from shore to board them, the pirates began using “mother ships”. Those are larger ships which carry a number of skiffs and 10 to 20 pirates. This enables the pirates to go further and further off shore to attack shipping.  Admiral McKnight said that “99.99 percent” of the pirates they’ve run across have been exclusively Somali. The question, however, is would a land-based military mission which attacked these centers of piracy successfully end the attempted hijackings?

In my opinion, probably not. To date the risk to reward has been so low that there is a seemingly endless supply of would-be pirates. And, as long as shipping companies are willing to pay the ransom when one of their ships is hijacked, it will, in relative terms, remain a fairly low-risk way of making huge sums of money. Shipping companies know the numbers and recognize that the real chance of hijacking is very low, relatively speaking, and seem to prefer to pay off the hijackers if their ship ends up hijacked. And, of course, they’re all insured, so that is also part of the equation.

While we may clean out the nests of pirates for a short time if we mount a military operation, I find it hard to believe that others won’t step in, adapt to the new reality (perhaps by moving their base of operations frequently) and again head out into the Gulf or Indian Ocean in search of easy prey.

Punitive military operations may be satisfying on some level but in reality I would think their effect would be a very short term one. Just like war against insurgents, war against the pirates will see a constant adaptation by the pirates to any tactics the military might use. But this isn’t a military problem - it is a failed state problem. The problems ashore - a failed government, abject poverty, and few choices for gainful and legal employment - are what must be solved if we hope to see piracy in that area defeated. Until they are solved, there will be plenty of eager replacements for whatever casualties we might inflict on the current pirates, and the attacks on shipping will continue.

Meanwhile, what can be done to make attacks on the high seas less likely? Well the obvious way is to arm the merchantmen. But for various and sundry reasons, most shipping companies don’t want to do that. They range from liability concerns, to concerns about essentially untrained crewman with weapons to concerns about gun laws in the various countries the ships go. We know there aren’t enough naval ships to escort each merchant ship, so options are limited. Some merchantmen have armed their ships with high-pressure water cannons which have succesfully thwarted a few pirate attacks.

What I expect to see offered soon, perhaps by Blackwater, now known as Xe Worldwide, is rent-a-gun teams. For those that want them, a team is air-lifted to the ship as it enters the pirate zone and taken back off by air as they successfully exit the zone. I’m sure there are some legal and liability concerns there as well, but it may be one of those times when showing up at the rail and pointing a few automatic weapons at a very vulnerable skiff below you would be enough to disuade the would be pirates from attempting to board.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 1 Comment »

20. April 2009 by student.

I just recently went to Disney World in Orlando, Florida on April 11th with my whole sorority. I’ve been there several times over the course of my life and have also saw it as the ” Happiest Place on Earth”. As you you approach the gates of Disney those words are everywhere, as you walk in to the main entrance you can look up above your head and read ” Welcome to the Happiest Place on Earth”. I think when your at Disney in the afternoon it feels like your in some sort of a dome, as if the sky isn’t real and everything around you is make believe. We spent all day there from 9 in the morning to 10 at night. To kill time we talked about everything, one topic being how many people died at Disney World? Do people really die at the happiest place on earth? So after arriving home we never had the actual facts and numbers of how many people died. I took it upon myself to do a little research. The Orlando Sun Sentinel stated that there had been nine deaths in three years and fifteen deaths since 1989, thats twenty years ago. In none of those deaths disney was found at fault, which means to me Disney must have a really good lawyer. Disney isn’t the happiest place on earth after all. 

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 3 Comments »

20. April 2009 by student.

And while we’re at it, let’s close the War Colleges as well. That’s the prescription the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks puts out today as a great way to save federal funds. Why is it the ideas these guys come up with to trim the federal budget are always aimed at the military and never at entitlements and the like?

Here’s what Ricks proposes:

Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships. After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I’ve concluded that graduates of the service academies don’t stand out compared to other officers. Yet producing them is more than twice as expensive as taking in graduates of civilian schools ($300,000 per West Point product vs. $130,000 for ROTC student). On top of the economic advantage, I’ve been told by some commanders that they prefer officers who come out of ROTC programs, because they tend to be better educated and less cynical about the military.

Now, I’ll admit it’s been a while but I’m sure the dynamic is pretty much the same now as it was when I was in. I was an ROTC grad. Anyone who believes I was as well prepared as a West Point grad to function at the same level as them doesn’t know what they’re talking about. In today’s parlance, the West Pointers were “shovel ready” while most of us ROTC grads hadn’t even begun the bid process yet.

Of course I’m talking about my initial entry into the Army as a 2LT (of course our NCOs thought none of us were worth a crap). I had a good idea of what to expect, what was expected of me and what I’d experience, but I was far behind my West Point peers in real actual experience. In fact, as I observed it, at company grade (the ranks 2LT, 1LT and CPT are considered “company grade” ranks), the West Point grad and the OCS grad were usually the better officers (and with obvious exceptions, I felt most of the OCS grads were a touch better than the WP guys) while the ROTC guys were playing catch-up.

However, at both levels, West Pointers were right there among the best because they’d been taught, and taught pretty damn well, how to function at both levels.

So I don’t buy this fellow’s two-year informal study at all. I mean think about it - I went to one drill a week, not a number off them daily. And, in advanced ROTC, I went to ROTC classes three times a week. If you believe that schedule can compete with 4 years of being steeped in the military culture, visiting various military posts and schools, receiving lectures from leaders in your field and having real, actual leadership and command responsibility during that time, then I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn in which you’d be interested.

Not even close.

Ricks’ tries the usual academic elitist argument as well:

They remind me of the best of the Ivy League, but too often they’re getting community-college educations. Although West Point’s history and social science departments provided much intellectual firepower in rethinking the U.S. approach to Iraq, most of West Point’s faculty lacks doctorates.

Obviously the “intellectual firepower” Ricks notes would seem to be a fairly important to a school of that type. I don’t remember any of the schools with ROTC adding to that process of rethinking our strategy in Iraq.

That’s because you’ll find some of our finest military minds teaching at West Point. They’re also immersed in a culture that inspires and promotes that sort of thinking. What they bring to those schools can’t be bestowed by any sheepskin. Many of them are serving officers who come from a stint in the field to the classroom where they bring a freshness to their teaching which is utterly unlike the stale academic atmosphere found in most traditional institutions of higher learning.

Lastly, the comparison to a community college education is a pretty ignorant one because it ignores the purpose of the service academies. They do what they are there to do and do it well. And I have never heard an academy grad complain about his or her education. Their ability to earn advanced degrees at elite civilian universities seems to argue that it is much more than the level of a community college (unless we now have community college grands routinely headed to Harvard, Yale and Princeton as WP grads do).

I’d apply the same arguments to the War colleges. They’re there to serve a part of a very important process - to provide the transition from field command to higher command and staff positions involving policy, strategy and international relations for the brightest and best. They’re very selective. They also provide the next generation of the nation’s senior leaders the opportunity to begin networking among those with whom they’ll most likely be serving as general officers.

So, as you might imagine, I find Ricks conclusions to be based in some fairly poor assumptions instead of any real experience. Not that such conclusions are surprising anymore - we’re no longer strangers to journalists who think a couple of years and a couple of conversations somehow bestow a depth of knowledge about a subject which is simply irrefutable.

I’d much rather Ricks take a look at the massive waste to be found in most of the rest federal government’s spending and tell us why it’s involved in programs to build a museum for Liberace, bail out failing car companies, or pay to research the mating habit of wombats, or sea slugs, or whatever. Who knows, he might actually know something about those subjects (not that I’m holding my breath). However, if we have to get rid of something, I personally think this, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/17/AR2009041701900.html is an idea with merit.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 3 Comments »

20. April 2009 by student.

In a world where families are spread out all over the nation it is difficult to keep up with eachother’s lives without using technology.  Penny Ireland a 56-year old mother of five, keeps contact with her children and her 83 year old mother through the popular online social networking site Facebook.  At first I thoguht I was going to read that Penny has learned to use text on her cell phone to keep updated with her family.  This is not the case, Ireland and her family keep in touch through their accounts on facebook.  This website allows you to log in and talk to whoever you choose.  You can post pictures and how you feel that day and what is going on with your life.  Ireland calls facebook her familie’s “living room.”  many people are familiar with this site because it’s a popular site with college students.  It helps us meet new people who we go to school with and keep in touch with the friends we are not by anymore.  Now parents are using it to keep in touch with their children they are not around anymore.  Facebook and other websites like Myspace are not only hangout sites for the younger generation anymore.  In recent months the older genereation has taken over these sites at a faster rate than any other group yet.  Although the older population on Facebook has grown, people over the age of 65 are still only occupying seven percent of the websites population.  Spreading away from college towns where this website was first adopted has helped facebook grow to over occupying 200 million users.  Many older people are joing the website to keep in touch with their younger family members.  It is a quick and easier way for parents or grandparents to keep an eye on their children and grandchildren.  For example, Margaret Brooks who is 63, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, joined facebook because there was no other place for her to see her 18-year old grandson’s artwork. Since one can post pictures on this site she is now able to see his art work and what he is up to without having to be in the same state.  Even joing facebook is not as easy for the older crowd as it is for the oyunger crowd.  I thoguht it would be easy for them to just want to sign up and have a webpage like most of the younger crowd does.  They now have options to find people form high school and their past that they maybe have not been able to keep in contact with.  Older people often must overcome fears about privacy issues before they join this site, due to the lack of privacy on this site.  On facebook you have the option of letting the public view any information about you that you post.  They can see what your religious beliefs are, your relationship status, your birthday, and where you are from.  In a way these online sites are a stepping stone for the older community.  They are finding new ways to connect with the younger crowd and show that they can still be a part of our lives.  I think this is a good thing for the younger crowd too.  I personally don’t know if I would want my parents to have a facebook; but, I like being able to connect to cousins that are in a different state and who I do not get to see often.  I just think it is amazing how much technology is changing and how we are all adapting to it.  Everyday there is a new form of communication and it is not taking long for everyone to learn how to use it and connect.  Now parents don’t have to drag it out of their kids how their days was, they can just read what their status is and bam- they have their answer.  All through the wonderful power of the Internet.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 1 Comment »

20. April 2009 by student.

We are taught at a young age that in America we are allowed to speak our mind and believe what we want; but, this does not mean that negative feedback will be dismissed.  In Topeka, Kansas if one were to come out and say that they were gay or a lesbian than they would be risking the fact of followers from the Westboro Baptist church hearing this.  Although labeled as a church this group is found under the affiliation of a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Pastor Fred Phelps established this church in 1955.  They still exist today as a Baptist church and believe that they are doing good by teaching people to go against the form of sins such as fornication, adultery, remarriage, and divorce.  One of the main reasons this group is nationally known is due to the fact that they picket anything having to do with homosexuals.  The group carries out an estimated six pickets a day and around fifteen on Sundays to riot at funerals of gay victims of murder, gay-bashing or death related to AIDS, and other events related to that of gays or lesbians.  In 18 years the church has participated in around 41,000 protest in over 650 cities having to do with homosexuals.  It is estimated that the church spends $250,000 a year traveling around the world to picket at these events.  They receive their money from the combined income of their congregants and also money won in lawsuits against their opponents.

They use this money to travel to different states to make sure that they are heard and the people can hear their message.  Recently the church began to picket at funerals of soldiers that were killed in the Iraq war.  The church believes this to be acceptable because they believe that these men and women did not join the war out of a sense of patriotism; but they joined because they’re “lazy, incompetent idiots” and unable to find work elsewhere.  In Autumn of 2007, $5 million in damages by a jury was awarded to a father of a fallen marine.  His son’s funeral was picketed at by the Westboro church.  Other activites that the church takes place in is, “peaceful sidewalk demonstrations” or so they like to call them this.  They show up at homosexual parades and other parades displaying large, colorful signs containing Bible words and sentiments such as: “God hates fags, Fags hate God, AIDS cure fags, Thank God for AIDS, God blew up the troops, God hates America, America is Doomed, The world is doomed, etc.”  anyone can see that these signs are not “peaceful demonstrations” in any sense.  They are violent attacks on people that does not need to occur.

In a sense, they have succeeded in part of their mission because people have heard and seen their messages.  I would not say that everyone has jumped on the band wagon and started to practice their faith after reading their signs and hearing them preach.  Personally I was shocked that this is occurring.  After researching into the church I can not believe this is the path some people are choosing for their life.  I think everyone deserves trust and respect with their own privacy, beliefs, and sexual orientation.  If a man is in love with a man, or a woman is in love with a woman, than let them be in love.  Who are we to stop them from living their life and loving who they love?  It is not anyone’s place to disrupt their lives just because you do not agree with it.  The fact that the church thinks they have the right to personally attack people just because they are a different sexual orientation than themselves is just wrong and disgusting.  I also was shocked when I read that in 2003 the Supreme Court ruled that we must respect sodomy and the church can continue their peaceful demonstrations.  This church has received international attention and continues to believe that their gospel messages are the world’s last hope.  I do not think this is the case at all.  We can not point fingers at homosexuals for the bad in the world.  It has nothing to do with them; it is just how the world is going to be.  We are going to have evil but we can’t go around picketing events hoping this will change how the world is.  If anything this is making the world worse by making even more dividers between people.  Everyone should be able to be treated as equals.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 1 Comment »

20. April 2009 by student.

Media Affects of ChildrenEven though all children legally have to attend school until the age of sixteen and spend an approximately nine hundred hours at school annually, most also absorb more than a thousand hours in front of the television every year. American Academy of Pediatrics, AAP, guidelines also say a child should watch no more than one to two hours of television a day. The AAP in addition discovered that on average kids in America watch approximately four hours of television a day kids tend to watch more television when bored, also after school and homework which adds up to hours which could disbursed with more educational and advantage stricken activities. The dictionary definition of media is stated as the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines that reach or influence people widely. Teenagers are affected by the media in countless diverse aspect of their lives by body imagine and gender identity.No one can deny that popularity in high school is above all based on how a child looks.  Insecurities over attractiveness and weight rise when teens are battered with images on TV of almost impossible thinness and beauty. Many of the viewers of these unrealistic bodies don’t understand how impractical these images are for teens. Images on television instruct the viewers in countless ways to be thin and loose more weight. Television programs rarely have actors and actresses with average body types. In numerous programs overweight characters are seen as lazy, loners and the “bad guy”. Diet advertisements also have a supreme effect on teens, because the teens are continually exposed to the thought that losing weight will make them a happier person.  The About Face Organization has found, “Four hundred to six hundred bombard us every day in magazines, billboards, on TV and in newspaper. One and eleven has a direct message about beauty, not even counting the indirect messages”. Barbie dolls have been blamed limitless times for the development of eating disorders and body-image issues. These dolls are illustrated as perfect portioned and sized bodies. They are also exhibited with materialistic possessions, which beauty and thinness equates to happiness. Media plays an intensely important role in the lives of teens, which follows the messages sent to teens about sexuality through the media they absorb. A modern study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than fifty percent of television shows excluding news, sporting events, and children’s programming, composed sexual content, which incorporated an average of more than three scenes per hour. Another study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that teens believe that the media they watch influences their sexual decisions. Many teens who are afflicted by media are affected with several teenage problems like drug and alcohol abuse, pregnancy and suicide. Many people believe that there are three main issues that affect teens are part-time work, friends, and most important media.                  Today’s society has become a media stricken community, the internet, television, movies and magazines are just some of the ways in which kid under the age of eighteen experiences the harmful effects of media. Studies have found that kids viewing television most of the time drops as they become older because they spend more time socializing and doing school work.  Still the amount of media that kids watch on a regular basis affects them in mostly negative ways. Teenagers are affected by the media in countless diverse aspect of their lives by body imagine, and gender identity.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 1 Comment »

20. April 2009 by student.

According to the National Association of Childrens Hospitals:

Nearly one-third of U.S. Children aged 4 to 19 eat fast food every day

Fast food consumption has increased fivefold among children since 1970.

16 percent of children (over 9 million) 6-19 years old are overweight or obese — a number that has tripled since 1980.

As you can see from these statistics, with the growing rates of childhood obesity is the increase in consumption of fast food by children.  But is fast food by itself causing children today to become obese or is it just a part of the problem? Some parents have sued these fast food companys, such as McDonalds, for making their children fat.  But other issues that cause childhood obesity include a lack of exercise and a failure to be responsible for your own actions.  When children or parents of an obese child try to blame Television advertisements, schools for not providing healthier lunches, or the fast-food companies, they are forgetting……..to blame themselves. 

The only person to blame for becoming obese is oneself.  Nobody is physically forcing you to eat fast food, becoming lazy and being inactive to the point where you gain massive amounts of weight.  Now if you dont care that you are obese and you want to continue to eat fast food and be inactive, thats your right.  But for those people (and it is a small percentage, to be fair) who blame others for becoming obese themselves, it might be time to get a reality check - fast food companies, TV, video games etc etc do not care if you get fat. You only have yourself to blame.  And only you can fix it should you feel it is a problem. 

The bottom line is people need to be responsible for their own actions. Blame yourself.

http://www.childrenshospitals.net/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Homepage&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=41737

Posted in Social Problems | 4 Comments »

20. April 2009 by student.

According to the National Sleep Foundation:

40% of adults are sleepy to the point that their daily activities are being negatively affected.

50% of U.S. adults get less than 7 hours of sleep per night on average, which is substantially less than the recommended 8 hours.

60% of U.S. adults drive while drowsy.

Sleep deprivation is an often overlooked social problem today.  It is defined as the lack of the necessary amount of sleep that a person needs to optimally function. The effects on the body and mind are substantial and unfortunately are often ignored. Sleeping is seen by many people as something that does not involve a proper routine. It is often done in the style of collapsing on your bed when you are absolutely exhausted. The effects that sleep deprivation has on the mind are very serious and unfortunately it is often ignored.

Irritability, delayed reaction time, learning deficiencies, memory lapses, reasoning and calculation errors are the most common effects.  But injury and death are also potential side effects.  It is estimated that up to 60% of all car accidents today involve sleep deprivation and according to the National Highway Safety Administration there are 1,500 deaths in the
U.S. per year related to sleep deprivation.  Think about that. Something as simple as going to bed a couple hours early can save your life or another person’s life.

And the British Journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine reported that sleep deprivation to the point of drowsiness can have the same effect as being drunk. DRUNK.  They did study cases and it was shown that people who had less than the recommended 8 hours of sleep on average actually performed worse in driving than those with a blood alcohol level of .05

But why do people continually deprive themselves of sleep? The biggest reason is because they do not even realize it.  There is no fever or a rash that tells you that you are not getting a proper amount of sleep.  And the use of coffee and energy drinks to stay awake and energized only perpetuate the problem because people think that once they use these types of products they’ll be fine.  But there is simply no substitute for a good nights sleep.  No amount of caffeine can replace lost hours of sleep.

Get on a schedule and go to bed.

Posted in Social Problems | 2 Comments »