23. April 2009 by student.

The general public remains fairly uneducated about childhood sexual abuse. What they know is informed by myths and misunderstandings with the result that most children believe sexual abuse is their own fault. Most survivors suffer in silence out of fear of the responses they will get if they talk about it. In many countries, victims are ostracized and even killed. Family members protect perpetrators and punish victims out of fear of public disgrace and destitution. When peers learn that a child has been sexually abused, some bully and harass child survivors to the point where children have to transfer schools to maintain any semblance of mental health.

Being a sexually abused child causes problems for the child for the rest of his or her life. Many abused children end up abusing others, which is very detrimental for society. Abuse breeds abuse.

The lack of public will to provide services and wide-spread education protects perpetrators. As a result, child sexual abuse continues. I myself was sexually abused, so were most of the girls I know. Society is in denial about the long term effects of childhood sexual abuse. Because of this, I continue to hope that one day there will be a world-wide awakening to what we are allowing to happen to so many children.

Sexual abuse of children takes different forms: incest, child molestation by persons children know, child molestation by strangers, pornography, child prostitution and trafficking, temple prostitution, forced child marriages, and rape in war. Sexual abuse that strangers commit gets the most publicity, especially if children are abducted, but more than ninety percent of all sexual abuse is perpetrated by family members, friends of the family, and other persons children know. It is important to identify child sexual abuse wherever it occurs and not be blinded by misleading assumptions.

Whatever forms child sexual abuse takes, children experience an abuse of power, where older, stronger, and often more knowledgeable persons take advantage of them for their own sexual gratification. Children need empathy, understanding, and education about what happened to them. One of the most helpful words children can hear when they are sexually abused is the words that a mother said to her child: “I’m so sorry this happened to you. I love you, and I am here for you.” Parents must do whatever it takes to be responsive to the hurt their children have experienced.

Perpetrators require clear messages that what they do harms children for their life times. There is no justification for the use of children for sexual and emotional gratification. It is exploitation pure and simple. Children require protection from those who would harm them.

Non-offending parents, persons children know, and the general public all have parts to play in prevention and in helping children recover. Simply understanding that perpetrators take advantage of children, that sexual abuse harms children, and that perpetrators have full and sole responsibility for children sexual abuse is a start.

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23. April 2009 by student.

How many times have you caught yourself watching “The Real World” and thought about the evolution of reality TV? How many times hove you walked past a news stand only to see photos of baby Suri’s new outfit? Our soceity has slowly devolved into a steady diet of other peoples lives. From the old pillars of “Candid Camera” and “Cops” to the more recent “Flavor of Love” quality television has been usurped by all new shows of the same old thing, with a different twist and a new face. Who’s suffering the most from this? Our youth. When little Johnny comes home from school and sees young attractive people on MTV getting drunk and being promiscuous it makes one wonder what kind of affect this can on the phyche of a child. Even if the content is wholesome, we’re teaching our kids valuable lessons in doing nothing productive with their free time. Here are some raw statistics for you. The number of hours of TV watched annually by Americans 250 million, value of that time assuming everyone was making $5/hour: $1.75 trillion. Number of minutes spent per week in meaningful conversation with children: 3.5, number of minutes per week the average child watches television: 1,680. Average number of hours American children spend in school per yer: 900, number of hours spent watching TV: 1500. The only ones we have to blame is ourselves. The viewership for the finale of American Idol last year was 36 million people. US weekly had 2007 sales of 1.9 million and People magazine had 3.6 million. The public appetite has only increased since. Indeed the magazine sales may not seem impressive but when you put it into perspective that many people get their fix for celebrities’ lives on the internet you get a whole new picture all together. Gossip websites Perez Hilton and TMZ get upwards of 632,00 hits per day a piece! It seems that every season there is a slew of new reality shows just waiting to live your life for you. Think about all of the shows that have come and gone in the last 6 years… the bachelor, the bachelorette, the biggest loser, road rules, the amazing race, the apprentice, top chef, the real housewives, hell’s kitchen, the contender, and the list could go on much longer! When will our craving to live vicariously through other people stop? We need to go back to the days when kids would be out playing baseball, or at least spray painting trains as opposed to stiffling their imagination staring at “the babysitter”. My roomate and I have discussed this and as a way to protest the garbage that is filling up our televisions and time we decided against getting cable (now x-box is a different story altogether!). I suggest everyone do the same or at least stop watching the filth that is Reality television. Live your own lives people, CARPE DIEM!

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23. April 2009 by student.

i jut thought i would give my two cents on this new corporate mumbo jumbo called lean thinking. i work for a coffee company and i wont mention any names, but if your familiar with Battle Star Galatica you’ll get the reference. anyway i went into work about two weeks ago and my new training material for me and my fellow partners at work was this new corporate concept of lean thinking. As ususal i was agravated at the thought of having to do something else and not get paid the corresponding raise to compensate for it, bu thats just management for you. So as i watched the videos that explained this new concept of repeatable processes and taking the thinking out of work and just doing a the same thing over and over again i couldn’t help, but reference the book “1984″ George Orwell and think to myself “If you change the Past you can controll the Future”. this concept of the book stuck with me and then i remember the party memebers in the book and how they were and undereducated group of individuals and how they were so easily manipulated into thinking what big brother wanted, and then it dawned on me my company was the proverbial big brother and i was being manipulated into thinking this concept was good and that i ws making the company more money and i would keep my job, but at what cost? this whole new concept is a direct strike at individualsim and the right to perform accordingly to yourself and be personable, this new concept only allows the use of sacran tablets and overalls to infect us all sooner. the worst part is out of necessity i sat my partners down for a meeting and fed them this crap that in all honesty i didnt even want to swallow….now thats a social problem.

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23. April 2009 by student.

You can get anything out of a catalogue these days; and if there isn’t a specific brand that produces whatever you desire, chances are good that you’ll find it on ebay. Dating has its’ catalogue shoppers as well - that’s what niche dating sites are all about. But if you want to really cut out the whole “courtship” aspect out of the equation and pick up a partner the same way you’d buy a bag of pretzels, there’s always Asian or Russian Mail Order Brides. The whole thing seems uncomfortably close to slavery to me (isn’t paying for a partner considered prostitution in most countries?) but there’s apparently enough people saying “Why should I waste hours on dating sites when I could just avoid the niceties and order one online?”

I suppose if convenience is your number one concern, then mail order brides makes sense. If you’re looking for instant gratification and just want get married as soon as humanly possible, then hitting those mail order catalogues. Some guys just want to rush into sex without any drama like “finding common interests” or “asking someone out on a date”. It could also be argued that the whole monetary aspect of mail order brides is irrelevant when you consider how much cash is funneled into normal dating. Money is usually going to be involved when you’re dealing with social interactions - not always to be sure (it IS possible to do dates that are pretty much cost-free) but money is still frequently mixed in there.

With all that said, I still have yet to meet anybody that’s been brazen enough to brag about their mail order brides. Ordering your partner on eBay is still considered pretty left-field, and it can definitely be considered a disgusting and degrading choice for finding your life partner. Freedom of choice is enshrined in this part of the world, and there are uncomfortable hints of non-consent when you buy a bride online. Sometimes that fear of slavery is unjustified - the women know what they’re getting into, know that this is basically a financial obligation, and are dying to get far away from their current (unpleasant) environment. But more frequently the women are naive, typically rural, and apply for the mail order bride positions because they think it’s a domestic service job (I think you can almost smell the irony here). It’s safe to say that mail order brides still fall into the social faux pas category, and the links between it and prostitution are a little too close for comfort.

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23. April 2009 by student.

Any school you go to all over the world always has at least one bully. In fact 30% of kids in schools have been involved in bulling either by being the bully or by being bullied. That is over 5.7 million kids and that is only in the United States. Male and female bullying often differs. With females they are targets of rumors and sexual comments. Males are usually are bullied by being hit, slapped, or pushed. One study shows that 60% of kids who bully between grades 6-9 have at least one criminal conviction by the age of 24. For the kids who are bullied they deal with issues such as low self-esteem, not fitting in, depressed, anxious, insecure, and afraid.

What can we do to prevent this from happen in our schools? Increase teacher and parent involvement, creating very clear rules and punishments for students, involve every adult and student at the school including cafeteria workers, janitors, and crossing guards. Schools who followed these guidelines cut bullying by 50%.

When i was in school there was bullying all over. Some kids were bullied to the extreme and had to change schools. Mostly in high school bullying turned into the boys sexual harassing the girls. Of what I’ve witnessed and from personal experience the schools don’t do anything about the complaints because then it becomes a he said she said game. High schools definitely need to be more sensitive to the female student especially because immature boys sometimes go to far and there is no punishment for them.

http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/faq/bullying.asp

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23. April 2009 by student.

You would think in todays society that racism would end but you couldn’t be more wrong.  I think racism will always be here and we will never be able to eradicate it.  The reasons we have racism  is that people lack self love or feel unworthiness and desire to feel superior.  Most racist people have low self esteem and lack self love so they project their negative feelings to others.  Especially to the ones they feel week and vulnerable.  Racism also comes from protecting ones own kind.  Most people tend to gravitate towards others of your own kind, or own image and to feel comfortable with others who look like us.  So with that comes the desire to protect our own kind and anything which isn’t like us becomes threatening.  Then we want to protect our own kind for the fear of any loss of what we already have.  They fear that if they get replaced by another race that they are unworthy.  Then there is ignorance, we know better but do we act better.  If we grow up doing a particular thing and everyone else around us does it too, then we come to believe it is right no matter how morally wrong it could be to the another person who does not share our culture and outlook.  They would not see anything wrong with what they are doing because other like them do it.  This will only change when awareness of those actions tell them that it may not be appropriate. 

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23. April 2009 by student.

In recent years, the eroticization and hypersexualization of girls in the media has gained public attention and fueled public debate, if not controversy. In North America, a couple of books have been published, identifying a social problem that should be publicly addressed.
Concerns about the detrimental effects of the phenomenon have been raised in newspaper articles and readers’ letters, as well as in magazines, radio and television reports. The problem, more often associated with girls’ dress and sexuality, is taken so seriously that
schools have adopted concrete initiatives for containment. However, these measures have often translated into an increased control toward girls. That is, once the dress code reform was found unsuccessful in solving the so-called problem of “g-strings” and “navel rings”, many
public and private schools pointed to uniforms as a legitimized and final solution. More recently, in the province of Quebec, the youth wing of the Liberal Party suggested that a law should prohibit g-strings at schools. Although it was rejected, the motion itself says a lot
about the general assumption that girls’ dress and behavior are social problems that must be addressed through institutional and public policies.

Who are the experts in this debate and what do they say? Who is allowed to speak out and who is not ? Who is said to be responsible for the problematic situation? What are the institutional and political responses to the problem? What are the consequences for girls who are usually targeted by dress codes and other attempts to control their behavior?

For parents, educators and school principals, the start of every school year marks the beginning of an exhausting struggle over clothing. During the last 5 years, the hypersexualization of girls’ fashions and girls in the media has exacerbated these concerns and fueled public anxiety. To deal with girls dressing in provocative clothing at high school, several school boards in Quebec reformed their dress codes or even introduced school uniforms. These measures of containment are usually implicitly or explicitly directed only toward girls, even though young boys’ baggy clothes do not fit social norms.

According to media reports, one of the more common punishments that school boards used to deal with the problem was to compel the offenders to put on ugly, over-sized sweaters. Although less typical, measuring the length of skirts and shirts to ensure they appropriately
covered girls’ body was also reported as a regulatory measure. But obviously, these attempts to monitor and regulate girls’ clothing failed to prevent them from dressing in ways that the school board considered inappropriate. In fact, the problem was so persistent that it came to be described as an “epidemic” of navel rings, g-strings and spaghetti straps. Given the difficulty in regulating the situation, a growing number of schools introduced –or even imposed- a conventional school uniform. The decision outraged many students and parents across the province, but this reaction did not gain much media attention. Nevertheless, the uniform solution has gained a growing acceptance among the public. For example, last fall, 88% of 2 000 viewers of a TV local news program answered yes to the question: Should public schools introduce schools uniforms? (In the context of that night’s news report this question was situated in relation to the on-going debate over girls dressing too sexy).
Although non-scientific, this poll’s result is fairly indicative of the growing social acceptance of the school uniform to govern girls who don’t “respect themselves” -a recurring expression to refer to the concerned girls. I contend that this is also closely connected to the way that the
discussion has been framed within the media over the years.

More recently several feminist scholars and experts challenged the male-centered perspective of this dominant discourse –girls as provocation. They contend that the problem is not that girls who wear revealing clothes are disturbing male students and teachers at school. They are
rather concerned by the detrimental social pressure girls face from advertising, fashion and popular culture. This image and sex-obsessed culture teaches the girls to conform to an unreachable ideal of beauty and to look for boys’ approval through heterosexual seduction and early sexual activity. According to these feminist scholars and experts, the lack of counter-discourse is likely to direct adolescent girls along a path of emotional dependence, that might expose them to sexual abuse and violence. Besides criticizing the male-centered perspective of the ongoing debate over the “navel ring problem”, they show a concern about the use -and abuse- of school measures of control targeting girls while ignoring boys.

Moreover, they urge parents, educators and decision-makers to improve the current high school sex education programs and to educate young people on egalitarian male-female relationships. In this feminist counter discourse, the girls are currently victims of the patriarchal culture of the media and fashion industries, which expose them to potential abuse. Thus, they must be protected, not controlled.

First of all, girls are silenced. School principals, teachers, experts, parents, citizens, and commentators express their view on the problem and claim their expertise on the topic, whereas girls are seldom asked to voice their opinions and to comment on the culture
that they live in. In fact, girls are at the center of the controversy, but at the margins of the discussion; even though each perspective claims to protect the children, the girls and even the society, the girls’ voices are muted. However, from a feminist perspective, we must remember that protecting those who are vulnerable has historically been a very successful argument used against women to keep them away from the public sphere.

In high school, I was a straight-A student. (with the occasional B….shhhh) Because I developed very early, I had a problem with many teachers when it came to my “cleavage”. I was written up numerous times, as well as suspended. The point I am trying to make is, my C’s never got in the way of my A’s.

Jokes aside, that is the way it should be. The way a girl looks shouldn’t be allowed to get in the way of her getting an education.

Works Cited:

CARON, Caroline (2006) “Too Sexy to go to School: A discourse
analysis of the recurring public debate on girls’ dress”, Paper
presented at the Canadian Communication Association Conference,
York University, Toronto, June 3.

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23. April 2009 by student.

Florida is number 2 behind California with the highest foreclosure rate in the country. Foreclosures went up 423% in Lee county, 650% in Collier County, and over 150 % in Charlotte County. From this January to March at least 804,000 homes Nationwide received at least one foreclosure notice. Many families are going through the stress and the pain of losing there homes. Many thought it would be the place they would live for the rest of their lives. The people are left homeless with families and nowhere to go. One family in SW Florida said they were put behind on their payments due to health problems. So many people out there are going through the same thing, they bought their house in the peak of the market and now they can’t sell their house for nearly what they owe on it. Lee county alone has 12.2 unemployment rate and its just getting higher. People are losing their jobs and unable to pay their loan.

Lucky for us George Bush is out of office and the new president is offering Americans a glimmer of hope. Barack Obama plans to put aside $75 billion to help Americans save their home. He says: “this is a crisis unlike any we’ve ever known”. This money will help save 9 million people from losing their home. If this is followed through than maybe this can be a start to a new better America.

 http://www.winknews.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/18/obamas-foreclosure-plan-s_n_167812.html

http://www.winknews.com/news/local/7989147.html

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23. April 2009 by student.

At first it started innocently — back in the day (about a year ago) various techie friends started to declare themselves social media gurus because they decided to hang out on Twitter and Facebook all day. And now an army of their offspring monitor prowl in search of human flesh.Now the first symptom of this disease was what I call “social media deafness”, a state that occurs when a person’s social graph exceeds 500+ virtual friends. The result is that the person is a mile wide, but an inch deep. Suddenly the friend you use to know develops amnesia like symptoms and starts ignoring your direct messages — what was first simple Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder becomes full blown zombie like state.

The zombies then seek each other: You’ll always notice that of the 5,000 followers that a social media expert has that all 5,000 of them are also social media “experts”. Their only form of conversation is to quote each other and live tweet conferences where they gather. Like any good Ponzi scheme the lead zombies can make a good living feeding the hopes and aspirations of the worker level drones who parrot their every blog entry.

But that’s where the problem starts with us civilians: The drone level zombies then start to stalk any innocent Twitter user they can find. They don’t care who it is or what that person is interested in because their first prize is the “auto-follow”. By finding enough folks who don’t have auto-follow turned off they artificially inflate their number of followers which inflates their “expertise” in the field. Most start out by doing this to each other, but before long they need to prey on the flesh of the living.

If you’re unlucky enough to be followed that’s when the real problems begin: Before long every little quip you put out is met with a useless unsolicited recommendation. At first you might tease the zombie about their hard sell technique, but alas zombies have no sense of humor. Worst yet is that zombies don’t know how to take a hint — and thats when my little buddy “the Block button” comes in handy!

Social media and SEO “experts” aren’t human anymore (i.e. they’re undead) so you should feel no guilt at all in shooting them — in fact it can be an act of pleasure once your get use to it.

Now I know what you’re all thinking: Can’t these pitiful creatures be saved? The answer is NO!

Like drugs, social media can be a good thing in the right hands. But there are too many people out there who don’t know what they’re doing and just get carried away. Sadly most people just lack the good old fashioned discipline to keep their worse instincts in check.

On a related note there’s also a related clan of zombies which are the SEO “experts” — these creatures are a blue collar variation of the social media experts and usually have the term “web master” in their bio. Sometimes the social media and SEO zombies can mate to produce a marketing strategy monster, but most of these are harmless as they don’t use the auto-follow technique.

In closing I’ve given this problem a great deal of thought trying to come up with a solution. At first I had a great idea about trying to have an automated script that would detect the zombies and block them as soon as they spot you. But like Spam I realized that any software solution was useless as the flesh eaters always manage to stay one step ahead of you. But then it hit me! Being a zombie movie freak and having watched too many monster movies I realized that the only solution is to lure the entire population of social media and SEO experts to an island and for President Obama to authorize the dropping of a nuclear weapon. Too extreme?

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23. April 2009 by student.

April 21, 2009

I went to the doctor yesterday because I have had a sore throat for about a month. I’ve felt fine, so I wrote it off as allergies or because I had been smoking cigarettes. My sore throat went away for a couple of weeks and then returned last week. I was talking to my mom, and she suggested seeing a doctor, she thought it could possibly be an infection.

I told him what had been going on. He immediately says that I have strep throat. I asked him if we needed to do a strep test. He said no (rather confidently) that he knew the symptoms all too well. I’m not a doctor, but I had never been diagnosed with strep without a strep test. He gives me my prescription and I go on my way.

I go to get my prescription filled and it cost me $44 with my deductible! I was told that there were no generic forms of the medication. Before deductible it would have cost $150!

Today I began my medication. I felt worse then I did without it! I went to work tonight and was telling my co-workers what happened. One of the women I work with said she has heard from many of her friends who had seen this doctor, that he has diagnosed them with strep throat without performing a strep test. This same thing happened to one of my friends, who later found out she had an ear infection! Another one of the women I work with asked me what he prescribed me, it’s called Methylprednisolone and it is a steroid used to treat arthritis, and Chron’s disease! I was also prescribed Avelox with is an antibiotic but not for strep throat. Avelox is used to treat bronchitis and pneumonia, respiratory infections.

I looked into what should have been prescribed and what should have been done to determine whether I even have strep throat. Azithromycin, cephalexin, or cefadroxil are examples of antibiotics that would have been appropriate to prescribe. Secondly, a throat swab is always done to determine whether strep throat is the issue.

Is this happening around the country? Doctors who are too old to be doctors still in the business? What can be done to keep health care professionals in check? When I go see a doctor I am trusting (and paying) that he knows what to do. Across the country doctors are sued for mal practice more often than necessary, but there is a large amount of physicians who do need to be sued. Another issue is that major drug companies will push doctors to prescribe a certain drug. Isn’t that interesting that I was prescribed a steroid that was rather pricey and had no generic.

Although it is difficult to get specifics on how much corruption there is in the health care system, the system is definitely prone to corruption. The following statement supports what I have experienced:

“The spectrum of corruption ranges from physicians with conflicts of interest advocating a particular treatment for the wrong reasons to aggressive marketing strategies by pharmaceutical companies; from underpaid health workers accepting small bribes from patients to the provision of ineffective counterfeit drugs; from large-scale embezzlement of public-health funds to massive distortions of health policy and funding by corrupt government officials.”

In an article about how pharmaceutical companies corrupt doctors, numerous stories were reported of doctors being paid off to prescribe certain medicines, even if the patient didn’t need it!

“No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top nine US drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year. By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.”

I don’t understand how this man can be a legal doctor and it makes me wonder how many doctors there are out there that are careless and not fit to be working in the profession. There needs to be a test or an examination a doctor must go through to keep his license. This doctor is apparently too old to be a doctor and he needs to retire. I wasted money on my visit to see him and on medication that I don’t even need! I’m going in tomorrow to tell him his mistake and hopefully he will take it too heart and think about what he is doing.

April 23, 2009

I went in to talk to the doctor and he wasn’t there. He had a half day yesterday and wasn’t going to be in again until Monday. I talked to one of the head nurses I told her my concern and it was almost as if she knew what I was going to say! She told me that the doctor always prescribes steroids for strep throat that you don’t need to do a strep test if you know the symptoms and the anti-biotic (Avetox) is for a wide range of disorders. All of these statements went against the research I found and against common sense!

I grew up going to this doctor; I hadn’t been in the last 3 years because I was attending school in
Tampa. He has never prescribed me steroids for strep throat which is something I would get almost every year in high school.

The health care system needs to be more regulated then it is. It is important to be aware that your doctor doesn’t always have your best interest in mind, do your own research and when possible natural remedies are the safest way to go.

Health Journal: Corruption in Health Care

http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2006/02/corruption-in-health-care-costs-lives.html

Drug companies corrupt Doctors: Reports on specific cases

http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=3726

Drug Push

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/8-drug-companies-influence-doctors-and-health-organizations-to-push-meds/

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