3. December 2009 by student.

            Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is an emotional illness that usually develops as a result of a terribly frightening, life-threatening, or otherwise highly unsafe experience. These interactions have such a strong impact on the development of social skills and behavior. Research indicates that one in eight returning soldiers suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but less than half actually seek help for it. Many of these soldiers feel that if they try to get help, the knowledge of them having PTSD would hurt their careers. Once called “Shell Shock” and “Combat Fatigue,” the symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, detachment, irritability, concentration troubles, and sleeplessness. All of these symptoms are results of their military interactions. Also, PTSD sufferers tend to be at risk for higher use of cigarettes, marijuana, and alcohol. The one thing that soldiers should try and understand is if they do not get treated the prolonged effects of PTSD can really ruin their lives. Getting help for PTSD usually includes psychological and medical treatments. Providing information about the illness, helping the individual manage the trauma by talking about it directly, teaching the person ways to manage symptoms of PTSD, and exploration and modification of inaccurate ways of thinking about the trauma are the usual techniques used in psychotherapy for this illness. It seems like the only benefits soldiers are receiving from having PTSD is the disability compensation checks and technically all that money is used to pay for those soldiers’ medical bills anyways.

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 3 Comments »

3. December 2009 by student.

My grandmother now text me when she has food ready for me when I get home from school. My dad text his sports buddies about the game. My mom just learned to use Skype a few days ago.  The thing is two or three years ago, I actually had to teach them how to turn on the internet and how to add contacts on their new phones. I think the problem of the older generation being afraid of change is going to fade slowly as time goes on. “Our data shows a rise in text messaging among older adults, who are looking into using these technologies as the fastest and most convenient way to communicate without voice,” said an SK Telecom official.  Everyone just wants to stay connected with each other. Twitter, Facebook and so much more used by the older generation. The reason I think this has happened is that technology has completely dominated society. No one wants to left in the metaphorical dark ages. Therefore, in result they have had to react to their surroundings

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/digitalcommunication

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/04/123_43659.html

Posted in Introduction to Sociology | 3 Comments »

3. December 2009 by student.

About four million cats and dogs are put down each year in America alone. There is a major problem in the United States with overpopulation of cats and dogs, but there are two logical solutions to decreasing this statistic: spay or neuter your pet and adopt from your local shelter instead of spending hundreds of dollars at pet stores. Breeders get paid to bring puppies and kittens into the world and sell them, but it is up to the buyer of these puppies and kittens to sterilize their pets. The Lee County Domestic Animal Service has adopted this new program called “Operation Spay our Strays: Trap-Neuter-Return” for feral cats this way they do not have to euthanize these cats they return them into the society and not worry about them repopulating again which would cause more problems for the overpopulation. If every shelter would use this program it would help the overpopulation drastically. More households own dogs than cats, this is another reason why there are so many cats on the streets then there are dogs, don’t get  me wrong there are many dogs on the streets but more people tend to adopt or buy dogs than they do cats. Dogs are a “man’s best friend”.  Also, if one adopts a cat or dog from a shelter that animal will be sterilized. If more people would adopt from shelters rather than get them from pet stores those animals at the shelter won’t be euthanized. The overpopulation of pets is outrageous just spay and neuter your pet that way there won’t be overcrowding at shelters. Animals do not know any better to not get pregnant they are animals we have to help them they are defenseless in this situation, animals don’t know that the more they produce the more cats and dogs get killed each year.

http://leelostpets.com/Pages/Trap-Neuter-Return.aspx

http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/

http://network.bestfriends.org/421/news.aspx

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3. December 2009 by student.

In the United States obesity is becoming more prominent. 3.8 million Americans weigh over 300lbs. There are national conventions being held by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity which says a lot. If we have to have national conventions to help find ways to prevent obesity because people cannot do it on their own because they want a quick fix, it’s not going to happen. There are shows on television now promoting weight loss challenges (Biggest Loser) with money incentives if one loses the most weight when one should be doing it for themselves and their family to try and be healthy. I am not the skinniest person but I try to be healthy and I know it’s not always one’s fault that the weight doesn’t come off. I believe our culture is greatly to blame for this problem. There are so many fast food chains everywhere you turn it’s just easiest to go in the drive thru and get something to eat. I think those food chains should worry about what they are putting into their food. Some are trying to become better and healthier which should help the obesity problem in America a little bit. There are colleges like Lincoln University in PA that are making those students who are overweight and obese to take a mandatory course in physical education in order to graduate. I do not think that one should have to take a P.E. class in college in order to graduate. Universities should not have the right to say who can and who cannot graduate based on if you are obese or not. One should want to be healthy and do everything they can to come out of the “obesity” category it is not the easiest thing to do but family and friends should support anyone on that journey. America shouldn’t be known as the “Obese” country.

ASD & CDC Research Statistics On Obesity In The United States http://www.americansportsdata.com/obesityresearch.asp

Weight of the Nation http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/index.html

The Biggest Loser www.nbc.com

BMI Requirement Causes Uproar http://media.www.thelincolnianonline.com/media/storage/

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3. December 2009 by student.

I think a big social problem nowadays is children not getting out in the fresh air to play their games and live a healthy life. Kids today just sit inside and watch TV and play videogames all day long. No longer is the saying “fun in the sun” as relevant as it was in past times. It is true that as generations come and go there are certain technological advances that come and go along with them, but with all this technology should world around us completely being lost to new generations?

The statistics will shock you to find out how exactly not playing outdoors can and has been affecting the children today. A whopping 70 percent of children of the children in the United States have a vitamin D level that is below what it is supposed to be. If you did not know, vitamin D is also referred to as the “sunshine vitamin” the sunlight is a great and major source of vitamin D. So basically children are not ever going outside to play in the sun anymore and they just sit inside all day and they do not really run around and play like the generations before them did. Dr. Michal Melamed discussed the bad effects of having low levels of vitamin D stating, “There is a lot of data that suggests adults with low vitamin-D levels are at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and a lot of cancers, and if kids start out with low levels and never increase them, they may be putting themselves at risk for developing all of these diseases at a much earlier age.” This is one way to look at this major change, but another way to see it is that the media has played a role in the change as well. Even though crime rates have gone down substantially over the years many people think that it is steadily rising. This is all due to the scary image the media paints of the world by only showing the bad things that happen in the world. This may in turn cause parents to not want their children outside as much because they fear their child will be victim to a kidnapping or some kind of horrendous crime.    

                Whatever the reason may be, we should strive to work hard to get the children of today’s generation back out into the world. Since the media may have had a big effect on this problem it should play a role in undoing the situation at hand. First thing should be to raise awareness about the problem which the media has already taken steps to accomplish through local as well as international news mediums. The next step should be to find ways to get children back outside playing in the fresh air, and there are organizations such as major sports leagues like the NFL who help do things like this. There are also many campaigns that try to get children active in the world again; these are the kinds of things we need to do to reverse this social problem.   

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3. December 2009 by student.

Currenly in America one third of the population is under extreme stress according the The American Psychological association. 45% percent of Americans have reported that there stress levels have even incleased in the last 5 years. As you can see this is a big problem that I feel everybody experiences directly and indirectly. This is a big issue becuse of the health risks mentaly and physically that are associated with stress as well as pretty much every aspect of life.

Stress causes 31 percent of adults have difficulty managing jobs and family responcibilities.  stress causes 54% of Americans to fight with close family members and it gets even further when statistics show that 8%  are divorced specifically related to stress. Stress is also causing one in four Americans to alienate from other family members. “Stress in America continues to escalate and is affecting every aspect of people’s lives from work to personal relationships to sleep patterns and eating habits, as well as their health,” says psychologist Russ Newman, PhD, JD, APA executive director for professional practice.

Even though 23% of Americans report that they are handling stress well, what happens to the rest? The answer is many are suffering mentaly and even physically. 73% of Americans suffer from psychological symptoms and 77 report physical symtoms. The psychological effects from stress include irritiability or anger, feeling nervouse or in panic, sleep disturbances, and lack of energy or motivation. 48% of Americans report lying awake at odd hours of the night due to stress! Physical effects due to stress include fatigue, head aches, lack of sex drive, stomach pain, change in appetite, dizziness, and teeth grinding.

When people are faced with extreme amounts of stress for a lenth of time; The autonomic nervouse system can become over active and can lead to stress induced conditions. These include but are not limited to depression diabetes, ahir loss, heart disease, ulcers, cancer, obesity, and OCD. In fact it has been clearly estimated that 90% of all doctor visits are in least partionally related to stress. This statistic is very alarming and shows the dissruption stress causes in a society.

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3. December 2009 by student.

Does society really know what race is? It’s  that a clear concept?  We believe that there are a lot of misconceptions when it come to race. Some people believe that race refers to skin color, religion, or a different classification based on genetic variations.  Race is a category of people who have been singled out  as inferior or superior,  often on the basis or real ,or alleged physical  characteristics such as skin color , hair texture,  eye shape , or selected attributes.  Throughout the time, the interbreeding has changed the classification of race.  Furthermore,  society tends to confuse the terms race and ethnicity.  Ethnic group is a number of people categorized based on their culture and nationality.  This group is characterized by unique cultural traits like their language, clothing,  religious  practices, a feeling of ethnocentrism, a sense of  community, territoriality, and ascribed membership from birth.  When we walk on the streets of a Little Havana in Miami you will perceive some of the ethnic groups characteristics.  They are so vivid that it make you feel that you are in Cuba.  Our race and ethnicity affect our society and other people’s life because the way we act and how we treat each other.  Moreover, race and ethnicity has affected our economy, politic and social life.  African Americans and Latinos have felt the ethnic and racial discrimination from College enrollment to sports team. In the nineteenth century, a race was defined as different biological categories of people who are not the same family but they share physical and cultural traits.  The ” whites” were placed at the top and the ” blacks” were placed at the bottom and the  other races placed in between.  According to professor Jack Dovidio from the University of Connecticut, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize. “We’ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don’t recognize,” Dovidio said.The way we classify people affect their access to employment, federal aid, social services, and other social programs.  In the United States they also use the term such as majority and minority group to classify the US population.  The dominant group has superior resources and treats the subordinate group as inferior based on their skin color and income category.  That bring us to prejudice, which is a negative attitude based on faulty generalization about members of  selected racial and ethnic group.  Although United States is a melting pot,  there is still signs of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination in today’s society.  People are being judged by their skin color, religion, language, and the way they dress.  To measure prejudice, sociologists use the concept of social distance.  They observe the magnitude to which people are willing to connect with other racial and ethnic groups outside their own groups.  Even-though the media is working hard to advertise in a way that includes all racial and ethnic groups, it does not reflect the real world in which we live.  Native of Americans have been the victims of genocide and forced migration, African Americans has been marked by slavery, discrimination and segregation, Chinese Americans women were brought to the US against their will and forced into prostitution.  I believe the future will bring even more discrimination and ethnic inequality, and it is our obligation as College students to make a difference in our society.  We all come from different ethnic groups and different countries; we are part of dominant or subordinate group, but we are all human beings and we should be treated with respect despite our race or ethnicity.  

www.cnn.com

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3. December 2009 by student.

                Sex trafficking has been a major issue around the world for many years. Sex trafficking, according to www.acf.hhs.gov, is a modern-day form of slavery in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion. A commercial sex act is any sex act that is done with anything of value is given or received by a person. Victims of sex trafficking can be men, women, or children, but the majority are women and young girls. All around the world, over four million women and young girls are trafficked each year. They are trafficked to different countries and sometimes even trafficked within their own countries. “Women have been found to be trafficked from more than 50 countries around the world” (www.ncadv.org). The world’s highest rates of trafficking come from Germany, Greece, Belgium, Italy, and the United States. In the United States alone, between 14,500 and 17,500 women are trafficked into the country each year (www.iast.net).

                There are many ways women become victims of sex trafficking. Traffickers will lure women to the United States by making false promises of job opportunities available to them. These include modeling, waitressing, and factory working. These women are then flown to the United States and taken directly to their employer upon arrival by an escort. At this point, the women have no control over the conditions of their employment and escaping is nearly impossible and very dangerous (www.webster.edu). Other women enter sex trafficking by a false marriage proposal from men who will then sell them to traffickers. There are also many cases where women are kidnapped by the traffickers. It is common that once these women enter sex trafficking, their traffickers will hold a “debt-bondage” to them, meaning the traffickers will tell them they owe money to them for their living expenses and transportation to the countries. They are then forced to “repay” the debt which most likely is an excessive amount that is impossible to pay (www.acf.hhs.gov).

                Women that are forced into sex trafficking face a numerous amount of health risks, both physical and mental. Physical risks include physical injuries (broken bones, etc), brain injuries, sexually transmitted diseases, and forced addition to drugs. Some psychological risks are shame, grief, depression, suicidal thoughts, and women are in great risk of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (www.acf.hhs.edu). Traffickers have also been known to instill in the victim fear as well as gratitude for being alive which is a coercive control called traumatic bonding.

                There have been a few programs that have been developed to help victims of sex trafficking. Rescue & Restore was developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services along with the Administration for Children and Families to help victims become eligible to receive benefits and services needed to live safely in the United States. These services include food, health care, and employment assistance (www.acf.hhs.gov). Many victims fear deportation and become hesitant to come to these programs so Rescue & Restore offers counseling and other help to connect better with the victims of sex trafficking.

                Although these efforts have been made to help victims of trafficking, there are still thousands of people that are being victimized every day. The fear of deportation, lack of understand of the American legal system, and lack of knowledge of these various programs are main reasons why there are so few victims being helped. It is important that there be more effort put forth to reach out to these victims and offer the help they deserve. “We can begin to defeat sex trafficking if we severely punish its national and multi-national profiteers, arrest its customers, offer a way out to its prisoners, and create self-respecting economic alternatives for girls and women who are at risk” (www.iast.net). With efforts such as these, the high rate of sex trafficking can be decreased. These men, women, and children that are being trafficked every day deserve good lives just as much as any other person and the lack of programs and work being done to save them is simply unfair. They did not choose this life and it is the duty of any human with morals to put forth effort to save them.

Websites used:

http://www.iast.net/thefacts.htm

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/about/fact_sex.pdf

http://www.ncadv.org/files/HumanTrafficking.pdf

http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/trafficking.html

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3. December 2009 by student.

For thousands of years human animals have been using other animals to advance our minor interests.  The consideration that non-human animals are ours to do whatever we want with comes from many traditions.  Take the Roman games for example; they used all manner of “criminals” and non-human animals to fight to the death as a spectator sport.  To Judeo-Christians the creation story assures mans dominion over animals.  From the Greek tradition; Aristotle’s theory about animals is more prevalent in modern Western tradition as opposed to Pythagoras’.  Although Aristotle acknowledges that man is a rational animal he believed that animals exist for humans, just as he believed the same about slaves, that they were both a person (animal) and an object.  Pythagoras was a vegetarian and promoted the welfare of animals.One person who really did not like Pythagoras’ ideas was Descartes.  Descartes thought that anything composed of matter was a machine of sorts.  Being a Christian, he believed that a soul is what made human animals different from any other animal, so consequently human animals are not machines.  These beliefs contributed a great deal to animal testing and vivisection being ethically and morally correct.  Imagine being nailed to a board and cut open without any anesthetic or sedatives whatsoever just to see how your blood flows!  Throughout the Enlightenment the attitude towards animals shifted significantly.  More and more people started to realize that animals can feel pain and that fact should be taken into consideration in dealings with them.R.G. Frey defined speciesism in his article “Speciesism” as “the name of a form of bias or discrimination that is much discussed in the contemporary debates over the moral status of animals. It amounts to discriminating on the basis of species; that is, it takes the fact that, say, baboons and humans belong to different species as a reason in itself to draw moral differences between them and on several counts.”  Ever since Darwin we have known that we are connected to non-human animals, so how is it that we still think we are so very different from any other species on this planet that we deny them the right to enough room to even turn around when they are caged or crated for human consumption?An argument that I hear quite often is that non-human animals are not as intelligent as human animals, and since they are intellectually inferior then they do not have an inherent right to life or freedom.  So does the same apply to mentally handicapped humans?  Mentally retarded people are significantly less intelligent than most people, so why then do they have rights that prevent them from being able to be chained in a backyard and kept in crates for convenience’s sake?  When put in that context it is apparent that intelligence should not dictate whether or not a sentient being has an inherent right to live and be free.  Sir Isaac Newton was a brilliant man but he did not have the right to own anybody he wanted based on his superior intellect.In his book, Animal Liberation, Peter Singer draws a distinction between men and women, thus constituting different rights for each sex, such as women having the right to an abortion but obviously men do not because men cannot be impregnated, therefore they cannot have an abortion.  Animals also differ greatly from human animals so they understandably cannot have the same rights as we have but, they should have some rights.  Singer makes a good point when he says that all men (animals) really are not born equal but each deserves basic rights.  In his book Singer says, “Equality is a moral idea, not an assertion of fact.  There is no logically compelling reason for assuming that a factual difference in ability between two people justifies any difference in the amount of consideration we give to their needs and interests.” Meaning there should not be a picking and choosing of some types of animals being worthy to have rights over others.Equality is a principle and our willingness to consider sentient beings interests should not be determined by what abilities they may or may not possess.  According to the very principle of equality all beings are entitled to rights no matter their gender, race, or species.  Speciesism along with racism and sexism should be condemned.  The primary objections to sexism and racism made by millions of people equally apply to speciesism.People who oppose animal rights have argued that to have rights; a being must be self-governing, must be a part of a community, and must possess a sense of justice.  These arguments are irrelevant because if you give them the chance; animals are self-governing, most do live in communities, and to possess a sense of justice would be to recognize that animals have rights and to not acknowledge that, the animal rights opponents themselves would not be worthy of rights because they would then not possess a true sense of justice.  Tom Regan says in his article “Animal Rights and Welfare” that “Animal pain and pleasure count morally in their own right, not only indirectly through the filter of the human interest in having humans treated better.” Solidifying the point that non-human animals are capable of experiencing pain and pleasure, maybe not in the same way as humans, but they deserve more than to be used solely for human interests.Some argue that non-human animals simply do not have interests because they are not capable of suffering from the knowledge that they will likely be killed in a few months for a humans benefit.  The people who argue that are still guilty of speciesism due to the fact that they will still allow animals to suffer in other ways.  For example, by being given electric shocks, or being scalded alive, or perhaps by keeping a calf contained since birth so that it has never had the chance to walk before it was killed.  All of that suffering just to save a few pennies.Peter Singer points out that:Normal adult human beings have mental capacities that will, in certain circumstances, lead them to suffer more than animals would in the same circumstances. If, for instance, we decided to perform extremely painful or lethal scientific experiments on normal adult humans, kidnapped at random from public parks for this purpose, adults who enjoy strolling in parks would become fearful that they would be kidnapped. The resultant terror would be a form of suffering additional to the pain of the experiment. The same experiments performed on nonhuman animals would cause less suffering since the animals would not have the anticipatory dread of being kidnapped and experimented upon. This does not mean, of course, that it would be right to perform the experiment on animals but only that there is a reason, which is not speciesist, for preferring to use animals rather than normal adult human being, if the experiment is to be done at all. It should be noted, however, that this same argument gives us reason for preferring to use human infants – orphans perhaps – or severely retarded human beings for experiments, rather than adults, since infants and retarded humans would also have no idea of what was going to happen to them.He goes on to say that if that argument is used to validate non-human animal experiments then we should be prepared to allow infants and retarded humans to be used for experimentation as well.Pain and suffering are bad and should be prevented no matter the race, sex, or species of that which suffers.  Pain levels vary, but pains of the same intensity are equally bad whether it is a human or non-human animal who feels it.For many, the right to life and freedom is reserved for humans.  Whatever their reasoning it is irrelevant because any being that are capable of feeling pain and pleasure has the right to life and freedom.  Discrimination against intelligence, species, or anything else should not be a determining factor for one sentient being to have rights and not all others.  It would be morally wrong to use a human as a means to another humans end so then we must realize that it is also wrong to use a non-human animal as a means to a humans end.

Works Cited

Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: Avon Books, 1990. Print.Regan, Tom. “Animal Rights and Welfare” Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1.2 (2006): 208-210. Print.Frey, R.G. “Speciesism” Encyclopedia of Philosophy 9.2 (2006): 164-165. Print.

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