25. April 2009 by student.

Personally I think the term “bisexual” is a joke. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary the definition for the term bisexual is of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward both sexes. What I don’t understand is how someone can truly be bisexual? I believe people can be attracted to the same sex and think they are sexually desirable but only in the sense of attraction.

During my senior year of high school my friends and I realized that almost half of the lower class was claiming to be bisexual. I understand that they are young and I guess if you will, experimenting, but I think that’s as far as it goes. It was mainly the freshman and sophomore girls who were heard of “hooking up” together. Whether it was a cry for attention or simply an experiment when it comes down to it I don’t believe that they were truly looking for a solid intimate relationship with one another.

T.V shows like Tila Tequilas Shot at Love on MTV doesn’t help the situation. In case you haven’t heard of or seen the show, it was about a girl who is bisexual and she is trying to find “love” and a group of lesbians and straight guys are there to win her over…and you never know if she’s going to pick a man or a woman in the end. Media is bad enough with all of its other ways of brainwashing adolescents and now they are showing game shows based on a bisexual woman, influencing the phenomenon of bisexuality to viewers.

Overall, to me, the idea of true bisexuality is pretty far-fetched. Yes, there will always be attraction between the same sex, the opposite sex, and both but in the end it’s about the person you can see yourself settling down with and living the rest of your life with. And last time I checked legally you can’t have both.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 2 Comments »

25. April 2009 by student.

After September 11 happened, airport security is a lot stricter, which I am thankful for. What I am not a big fan of is the “racial profiling” the airport does.

For instance, I was going to New York last August by myself to yes I will admit see the Jonas Brothers, okay, so I am in line at security my turn finally comes up and they see my last name, I am 75 percent Lebanese. I am also 5′1 was carrying a hot pink carry on bag, with a Jonas Brothers pin on it, and carrying a book in my hand. The airport security, then takes my liscene, scans it with 4 different lights, pulls me over to the side, searches everything I have twice and then finally lets me through, all the while everyone walking by looks at me with questioning eyes. Okay so I am fine with that, whatever, I am used to it by now.

My flight back, I get stuck in JFK for 30 hours, all flights were cancelled, just my luck. I am panicing because, I am alone, have 30 dollars on me, and my cell is dying. So I finally get some help, the flight rep takes me to the front to get a standby pass for the first flight out in the morning, thats awesome. Well as they pull up my name, the computer spits out my ticket with three red X’s along the bottom that say something like double security check. All because of my last name. I go back through security again with everyone looking at me, as I am now in tears, because I am so overly tired, hungry and freaked out. Long story short, I am in line the next day for my flight and THANKFULLY I get through, and as I am going the man behind me in line, who is of Asian race and his family of FIVE, threatens me and the security lady, saying if I get that ONE seat, he is going to stab us. SO security gets called, I get on the plane, thinking to myself. WOW a threat like that and they are putting me through security 5 times.

I just think they should take the same precautions with everyone, rather than just focusing on one race. I mean yes of course it was Middle Eastern people that caused this all to happen at airports, but they need to focus more on everything rather than just one person.

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25. April 2009 by student.

So I am into the whole “pop culture” thing and I will admit that I am a frequent PerezHilton.com goer. Well every once in a while he posts something, that has nothing to do with celebrities. I went to his website two days ago and found something heartbreaking and awful. At the end of this is the link to the story,about an 11 year old boy who commited suicide because he was being made fun of for being gay. “He complained about being called gay, ugly and “the virgin” because he was from the Virgin Islands,” she said( his mother).  When I read this I was in tears, how could kids away with this bullying? The school would not listen to the complaints from this young boys mother.

“Bermudez said she complained to the school about bullying seven or eight times, but it wasn’t enough to save him.”

How could a school let this go unnoticed? The thing is, is this bullying happens all the times, kids are taunted, beat up and harasssed everyday for being “different” or just not fitting in. We need to open our eyes to the big picture here, because not only does this bullying affect the child, it affects the family and in some cases, this kids mastermind a schoool shooting. A lot of the school shootings that have happened, have been because these kids have had enough of the bullying. The school officals need to step up and listen, instead of waiting for another incident. Because there might not be another chance.

 http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/23/bullying.suicide/index.html

Posted in Social Problems, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

25. April 2009 by student.

I got pulled over on Thursday night turning left from Imperial onto East Terry. I’ve been pulled over four times this year already and I didn’t mind getting pulled over the three previous times because I know I deserved it for speeding, reckless driving,and broken tailight. But on the fourth time I was very surprised I got pulled over. My friend and I were driving back from playing Rockband I took the left on a green light so I’m all good there and I finished taking the left and I see three cop cars on the side pulling over a van. I kept driving and after driving a hundred feet more I noticed one of the three cop cars following me I thought nothing of it and kept driving…the car lights go on so I pull over. After a few minutes sitting in the car the other two cop cars show up, so now I have all three cop cars pulling me over…and I’m getting pretty worried because three cop cars usually don’t pull over one car. One of the cops comes over to the window and asks me where I’m coming from, what I was doing, and where I’m headed. I answer his questions and he seems pleased with the answers. He goes over to the cars and talks to them for a while. After he’s done talking two of the cop cars leave, leaving me with one cop and one cop car. The cop approached my car flashing his ultra bright flashlight right at my face. He asks for  my liscence and registration once again even though the other cops had already checked it. “Did you steal this car?” he accused he asked with more certainness than doubt. “What?!” No, I’ve had this car for three years” I answered with surprise. “Step out of the car.” I reluctantly stepped out only to have him pushe me into the door and start frisking me, he then checked  my car, saying that the probable cause was that I had told him I had a plastic water gun in my car. The search went for about 1o minutes ending with him not finding anything of course. I got into my car and he said I was free to go and “stopr driving like a douchbag.”  I’m not sure why he had to do all of that.Maybe he had a bad day and needed to vent some frustration on some unlucky chump, or maybe he just dislikes Oldsmobiles. Whatever the reason for him treating me like a criminal and then calling me names it was not necessary. Bad day, or just mean person, he is a professional who is a “protector of the law”, he shouldn’t be treating people like that. I was taught treat people with respect to get respect and thats exactly what I did but without getting any respect back. Oh well, life isn’t fair and people aren’t fair. 

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25. April 2009 by student.

According to the International Labor Organization, an estimated 211 million children between ages 5 and 14 are working around the world. The website states that, “of these, 120 million are working full time to help support their impoverished families. Although child labor is most common in the Global South, it is found throughout the world, including in the U.S. Child laborers are often exposed to conditions extremely harmful to their physical and mental well-being.”

Child labor can include, but is not limited to work in factories, mining, agriculture, selling items on the streets, and even prostitution. Work is usually done regardless of the weather, and pay is very minimal. Not only is this work tedious and exhausting, but it definitely has the potential to become very dangerous. Would you want your 5 year old to go out and sell blankets or baskets on the street? This is not uncommon in third world countries. In America, it is very well accepted that children between the ages of 5 and 14 should be going to school, or playing.

I know that an adequate education is not available in all parts of the world, but I do agree that education is important and necessary for all children. Children should attend school, and not be forced to work excessively, as most of the jobs are extremely dangerous to children so young.

 Unfortunately, child labor exists in many places throughout the world. It will continue to exist as long as there is family poverty. Child labor will not be disappearing anytime soon, due to the intensive global competition for consumer goods. There are very few consumer goods that are still produced in the U.S. nowadays, so other countries will continue to have cheap labor opportunites.

Works Cited

http://www.laborrights.org/stop-child-labor

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | No Comments »

25. April 2009 by student.

With the tuition rising in Not only in the tuition is going up, but Students will pay, on average, from $381 to $408 more than last year for this year’s room and board, depending on the type of college acconding to College Board.com. This could hurt the job force in the up coming years.
“When we come out of the recession,” Mr. Callan added, “we’re really going to be in jeopardy, because the educational gap between our work force and the rest of the world will make it very hard to be competitive. Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers.” Although college enrollment has continued to rise in recent years, Mr. Callan said, it is not clear how long that can continue. - The New York Times.

The middle income family are willing to go into dept to get thier children in college, but the poor families don’t really have that choice. Society will fall a bit in the work force because we don’t have poeple who want to go to college going to college because they can’t afford it. This itself hursts us, because then we have less people trained to do the jobs that a need college degree to get. For explample, doctors, nurses, teachers, zoo technology. These things will not have a lot of people working in these fields and more.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | No Comments »

25. April 2009 by student.

Child abuse is a growing social problem that many people are facing everyday.There are 4 types of child abuse; physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect.  Most of the child abuse mainly comes from the father because they either had a bad day and they would take it out on their child. Another reason is when the child is doing badly in school in school or at home and the father would abuse their child.According to the national in 2002 an estimate of 896,000 was the victim of child abuse. The use of drugs can also play a role in  child abuse. Sometimes the parent uses drugs and when they are high, they either rape their child or try to hurt them badly. An alcoholic parent also has a higher chance of possibly abusing their child.

About 1400 of these children have died of abuse or neglect that comes from parents, caretakers, or teachers. Most of child abuse and child neglect comes from single parent families rather than families with both parents. Child abuse that is physical usually comes from maltreatment or neglect of children by their guardians. When a child was abused when they were young they usually don’t grow to be abusive parents. When a child get abused they usually keep it secret because they are scared and don’t want to be abused anymore, so they keep it a secret which is not the right thing to do.

In order to stop the increasing rate of child abuse, I think it would be necessary to have classes or sit-ins where kids can go and recieve information on abuse and hopefully get some advice on how to report these instances of abuse. The reason that we cannot put a stop to child abuse is because only a small fraction of these cases are actually reported. I think that if we could somehow give children the courage to report abuse, we could drop the number of child abuse cases all across the world.

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25. April 2009 by student.

The drought in Florida is a major social problem that is affecting everyone. In one way or the other, the drought has a toll on the lives of many Floridians. Not only does the drought cause environmental issues, but it can affect the health of all those who are experiencing it.

When it comes to the environment, the drought is like the devil, it is always up to no good. The lack of rainfall in florida is destroying our lakes, and forests. A few weeks ago, I went back home to visit my grandmother and do a little fishing on her lake. When I walked to the end of the dock, I noticed that there were now two lakes in her back yard. We havent had a good amount of rain in quite a while and the drought has caused her lake to split in two. In the middle of the lake, there is a sandbar that is about 30 yards wide. This is horrible for the wildlife in the lake, the drought is causing the fish to be secluded in one specific area, where they are doomed to overpopulate and die. When it comes to destroying our woodlands, the drought highly responsible. And with lightning season fast approaching, we could really use some precipitation. In 2008, lightning sparked more wildfires than any other cause, starting 27 percent of that year’s 2,847 fires.(TBO.com)

The drought is also causing some health problems in Florida. Drought has been known to cause large amounts of physical and mental stress among humans, such as anxiety, depression, loss of security, and domestic violence. We are also suffering from “low-flow”, when we do not get the appropriate amount of rainfall, our sewage flows are extremely reduced which results in high concentrations of pollution. This is not healthy to live around, especially if these pollutants get into our drinking water. This can cause many people to get sick and can possibly be fatal if not taken care of immediately.

The drought also hurts the social image of florida. When people think of florida, they think of lots of wildlife and beautiful plant life. With the lack of water, many plants and animals are suffering. Many peoples lawns look hideous due to the fact that they are not allowed to water them without restrictions. And on top of that, you have to worry about conserving water while inside your house as well.

There is not much that we can do to make the rains come down, but if everyone does there part to conserve their water, we can get through this drought. Just make sure that you are only watering your lawn on your designtated days, and try to take shorter showers, and never leave the hose or faucet on. By following these simple rules, everyones contribution to the conservation of water will help Florida to get through this.

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25. April 2009 by student.

Obesity is a huge problem that many Americans face everyday.  Obesity is simply defined as being unhealthily   over-weight.  Every year, more and more Americans have become obese.  Many causes are simply from having a slower metabolism than others and by eating more carbohydrates and calories than normal. 
America holds the trophy for having the unhealthiest people in the world. Are the television commercials that advertise fast-food chains, high calorie food companies, and microwavable meals to blame?  Are the parents the ones to blame? Or is it that obesity is genetic? The war between obesity and myself and obesity and other Americans is an ongoing struggle, one that people fight everyday.

I have fought with obesity for almost my entire life.  I remember when I was sixteen-years-old, I went to the doctor for an annual check-up and was told that I was unhealthily over-weight.  It wasn’t until then that I realized that I had become a victim of obesity.  Dealing with the struggles of obesity made me think a lot about my life.  The thought of getting diabetes, which is a deadly disease, not being in shape, or not fitting into society are just a few frightening situations I face along with everyone else who is over-weight in
America. Diabetes is a serious problem that obese people in
America face. There are two main reason why people get diabetes, one because their over-weight, and or two, because they are born into a family of diabetes.  Once diagnosed with diabetes, a person is at risk of having multiple heart diseases, strokes, nerve damage, kidney failure, and or the loss of a body part.

In America, portions of food have dramatically increased over the years.  Today, if you go to an Italian restaurant and order a meal off the menu, you get a huge platter of food whereas, even twenty years ago, you received a very little meal (compared to today’s standards) which was considered a normal portion.  Television ads are a major contributor to obesity in
America.  Lots of commercials choose to lure adults, but even more so, the children, into wanting to eat high calorie meals, cereals (for instance, Cookie Crisps, Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops, Trix, etc.), and snacks. I feel if the television commercials could concentrate on the healthier cereals like Cheerios, Special K, Kashi, etc., then that would help reduce the amount of over-weight people in
America.   Commercials that advertise fast-food chains (for example, Mc. Donald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, or Burger King), in a sense, brainwash Americans into wanting to take advantage of a cheap bite, fast service, and a tasty meal.  Many people would much rather do that instead of going out to a sit down restaurant and spending lots of money just to have to wait to eat their food.

To this day, people still struggle with obesity and it made me think, “Maybe they’re over-weight because their parents kept feeding them the wrong foods when they were a youngster.  Maybe the reason they’re over-weight is because their parents have been accustomed to bringing lots of junk food into the house.”  I think that the fight of obesity that children face has to do with a child’s parents.  For at least the first 10-15 years of a child’s life, all decisions regarding food, is up to the parents. Based on the number of advertisements, I’m sure food industries spend billions of dollars a year on marketing new products.  All that money goes to persuading the children to tell their moms and dads to buy those bad, unhealthy foods that are delicious.  I believe it’s up to the parents to be in control of what children eat. This way they grow up eating the right kinds of foods and not the junkie ones that cause people to become over-weight.   I feel that obesity has a lot to do with the genetics of a person as well.  I think that someone that’s born into an   over-weight family is bound to be over-weight in time.  Children are raised with the habits of what their parents learned when their parents were growing up. Therefore, if the parents learned horrible eating habits, then the child is bound to inhabit those attributes.

In conclusion, the war between obesity and myself and obesity and other Americans is an ongoing struggle, one that people fight everyday. 
America is trying so hard to eliminate obesity by offering dietary plans to people. Certain surgeries are offered to help people lose weight. Also, many drugs, like dietary pills and powders for those who want them, are available.  I feel that television advertisements do affect the minds of kids and what they eat.  If the companies could advertise healthy foods for kids that taste great, them I’m sure that obesity would be greatly reduced.  Good parenting and staying in control of what your children eat, and not allow them to eat more junk food than healthy food will reduce obesity rates dramatically.  As far as genetics go, I feel that if you’re born into a family where diabetes is hereditary, then that person should be in the best shape possible by eating right, working out, and not consuming all kinds of junk food.  Hopefully some day soon, obesity will not be an issue Americans face.

Posted in Social Problems | 1 Comment »

25. April 2009 by student.

Global warming has been an ongoing problem for a little over a century.  We as human beings release more carbon dioxide into our ozone layer then we could ever imagine.  What exactly is global warming?  There are still a large number of people in the world that do not believe or feel that global warming is an important issue, but why?  What are some causes of global warming?  What can we do to stop global warming?  If people don’t take action soon, the entire Northern hemisphere will be underwater.  Humans contribute to global warming everyday and it is imperative create solutions as soon as possible; otherwise, the things we take for granted like our beautiful rainforests, or snowy mountains perfect for skiing, might one day vanish.

I, for one, believe global warming to be a problematic issue.  Global warming is an increase in the Earth’s surface temperature.  This increase in temperature is caused by carbon dioxide being pushed into our atmosphere and polluting our ozone layer, causing it to depreciate.  So why don’t people believe in global warming?  Some say that human beings could never release as much carbon dioxide as nature itself for example, hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Others foolishly say: “the ozone layer isn’t going to be destroyed in my lifetime so why should I care?”  Well the truth is that if we don’t do something about this problem soon, then human deaths, diseases, droughts, floods, and storms will likely occur. I feel that people aren’t sure what exactly contributes to this terror on earth.

Florida Gulf Coast University has recently switched to a majority of course materials and course syllabuses online.  But is that the right way to go?  Isn’t computer usage just as bad to global warming as deforestation?  Well, the truth is, that even if people saved paper by using the internet, the internet is still producing less carbon dioxide emissions into the air then of the cutting down of trees. 

Deforestation which refers to the cutting down of trees is an extremely important issue.  If there are no trees on earth to produce oxygen, we’ll all die!  These massive machines that cut down trees are spreading harmful toxins into the air which is contributing to an unhealthily ozone layer.  Deforestation is horrible to the environment and more and more rainforests are being destroyed every day just so big cooperation’s can profit off us, the consumers. There are many reasons why deforestation occurs.  It could be to expand an over populated city, expand farm land so farmers can grow crops, or produce paper materials (tissues, pieces of writing paper, computer paper, or paper towels).

It is too late to stop global warming, but it can certainly be slowed down.  It wasn’t until the twenty-first century that car manufactures started building eco-friendly cars called “Hybrids” that run on solar power.  Nowadays, you can find a car with an estimated thirty to forty five miles per gallon , verses twenty to thirty years ago where the average car was getting about half that.  People started getting worried after reading these facts and started to fall in love with hybrids.  Hybrids are like golf carts, but without plugs to charge them.  They run off of a battery that is wired to the engine and recharges every time someone steps on the brakes.  Hybrids have helped contribute the restoration of our ozone layer by producing 90 percent less pollutants into the air in comparison to a gas guzzling car.  Car pollution contributes a lot to global warming and I feel that everyone should look into the Hybrid cars when they’re looking for their next car to buy.  If people can reduce, or even eliminate gasoline dependent cars on the road, then not only will people stop releasing carbon dioxide into the air, but also people would be able to go further distances without having to stop for gas due to the lithium battery powering the car.

It’s up to our generation to stop polluting the ozone layer by reducing or even eliminating the use of gasoline and electrical appliances. If people started working hard to slow down global warming than mountain tops wouldn’t slowly melt and I would be able to enjoy ski trips with my kids when they grow up.  If people would buy more hybrids, or more energy saving bulbs and turn off lights when not in the room to reduce electricity usage, then I feel that these solutions would greatly improve our ozone layer and potentially stop a serious disaster from occurring.

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