27. April 2010 by student.

Gourmet kitchens have become one of the most demanded items in new houses, expressing perhaps more of a dream than a reality. Today, women still do most of the cooking but, in our smaller, busier, more mobile families, men often share at least part of the load. Even at a time when fewer families gather around a table for dinner and when the tradition of Sunday dinner has been in decline for decades, popular magazines still promote the family meal. The well-prepared home made meal has come to be seen as something that can help hold families together. Food industry analysts have observed that, to keep meals in the home, some cooks are using fewer dishes prepared from scratch (only 55 percent of American dinners have one or more homemade dish, according to one survey), cooking larger meals so the leftovers can be used for a second meal, and making more one-dish meals to reduce side dishes. Food processors are constantly introduceing conveniences that make home cooking easier, such as individually wrapped hamburger patties and marinated meats. But, even with all the conveniences offered by grocery stores, more and more people are eating out.

Research by The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University consistently finds that the more often children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs. Now, I know that this is not the only thing that will keep kids off drugs. Nevertheless, it is obviously a part of what keeps a family close, and children safe. Another study by Wisconsin researchers found that children who eat out four or more times weekly are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease. There are also several studies that show a correlation between obesity and eating out. IT shouldn’t be surprising, but it seems like a simple fix. With more than half of the American workforce being women, it is obvious that women can do everything and anything that men can. So, it doesn’t matter if it’s the man or the woman that makes a home cooked meal in the evening. But, someone please take responsibility!

I only know a handful of people my age that know how to cook an entire meal from scratch.  As a twenty two year old college student, I know plenty of bright young people who are going to college for several reasons. Most want to learn; they want the tools to become wealthy. What most of them don’t seem to realize is that knowing how to cook a good meal is one of those tools. Imagine how much money one can save by simply cooking at home rather than eating out! For the fraction of the cost, one can have a healthier, cheaper, more satisfying meal on the table. If people would just take an interest, they’d realize that it really is a simple fix.

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27. April 2010 by student.

I think that the language being used in the media today is a serious problem. Hosts can use every curse word except for a select few. There needs to be some more limitations to the language. I understand that there is free speech in America and it is important that we express ourselves freely, but there is no need for that. also, children have access to radios and television, often without super vision and that opens the door for kids hearing inappropriate stuff. On t.v.s you can be flipinf through the chanel and see a scene that is practically soft core porn. For instince there was a keeping up with the Kardashins, a very popular television series on E network, that had an episode about Khloe making a sex tape for her husband. They showed her completely naked with her some candy covering her and her nipples blurred out. I was so surprised to see so much of her body! It’s a shame that society will allow so much sex to be in the media but then we have conflicts about saying the pledge of alligence.

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27. April 2010 by student.

According to the U.S. Justice Department one in five child murders are committed by other children.  Scary isn’t it?  The other day on television I watched a program on E! called E! investigates: Too Young To Kill.  The episode was all about young kids committing murder acts.  In one case four 12 year old girls kidnapped another girl who they went to school with.  Apparently one of the girls didn’t like how close she was getting with her boyfriend.  They beat her continuously with a tire iron and put her in the trunk of a car.  They then drove out in the middle of a forest poured gasoline on her and watched her burn alive.  This was all because of a little jealousy.  there are many more cases of child killers which were even worse than that.   I’ve heard people trying to defend these acts claiming that they are only children and don’t really have any idea what there doing.  But is that really true?  In 1968 Eleven year old Mary flora Bell and her friend murdered three little boys within two months.  When she was asked why she committed these crimes, Mary said she wanted to “hurt” someone.  So how can we possibly defend any of these actions?  I think that these crimes are just as bad as if an adult was committing them.  In another case, a eight year old boy purposely went out looking around for somebody to kill.  When he was interviewed later on in his life in claimed he was angry and wasn’t thinking.  That isn’t an excuse to me.  No matter how he was feeling, the bottom line is that he intentionally went out an murdered someone. 

What goes through these kids minds that makes them want to kill another human being?  I don’t know if that’s something that anyone will ever be able to understand.  It’s difficult to grasp the concept of anyone murdering someone especially someone so young , but these crimes do happen.

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27. April 2010 by student.

More and more often people are experimenting with illegal substances. What they do not know is that these substances are highly addictive and cause physical harm as well as harm to their loved ones. It is quite depressing to see one’s live go down the drain. These drugs have turned once innocent individuals into monsters, making them steal from their jobs develop mental disabilities and many more. These drugs are often brought in illegally from other countries and are sold on the streets in cities and soon after begin to have an increase in crime within the city. It is estimated that worldwide that there are over 50 million drug abusers

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27. April 2010 by student.

Deer Valley High School, Discovery Middle School and Birney Elementary School; these three schools have been through horrific experiences in the last couple of months.  Last September a shooting occurred at Deer Valley High School in California, but thankfully no one was killed.  In February of this year, two more remorseful events occurred when shootings occurred at Discovery Middle School and Birney Elementary School where a student died at each school.    

Bullying is definitely a cause of school shootings but that is not the social problem I want to talk about, I want to discuss gun control for minors and the mentally ill.   

The shootings that occur in schools show that underage kids have access to guns.  When doing my research I was shocked to see how many shootings have occurred in elementary schools.  These children are 6-11 years old and somehow have access to guns.  The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits minors from purchasing guns, but quite frankly there are many ways that kids can get guns if they want them.  This could be from their parents hidden safety gun or from some sort of underground market.  The older the child is, the more opportunity they have to get the guns that they want.  The following quote was a representative reaction from experts to the Columbine school shooting:

“The biggest problem I see in this society is to have adolescents who have access to firearms. It’s a lethal mixture,” said Mark DeAntonio, Director of Inpatient Adolescent Services at the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.  “The biggest difference between adolescents now and adolescents 20 years ago is the incredible access to firearms,” DeAntonio said. “It’s a very difficult, turbulent time and kids should not have this access to guns.”

The college student responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre, Seung-Hui Cho, may not have been underage, but he was mentally ill.  A murder weapon in the hands of someone who is mentally unstable will only lead to horror.  It is the persons own business and privacy if they are suffering from this kind of condition, but it becomes more than a matter of just their safety when they have access to a gun.  The Gun Control Act of 1968 also prohibits persons found to be mentally incompetent from buying guns, but just like for minors, there are ways around this law.

More strict enforcement of the gun control laws needs to be held.  Something needs to be done to prevent children and the mentally unstable from getting guns even from the most unlikely places. If we can curb the availability of firearms the high and increasing numbers of school shooting may begin to decline. 

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27. April 2010 by student.

In the U.S. approximately 14 million people suffer from some kind of alcohol abuse. Alcohol abuse is defined broadly as  a destructive pattern of alcohol use. Alcoholism is one of those diseases that transcends all ages, races, and genders. Now we have to determine the difference between alcoholics and alcohol abusers. Of those 14 million alcohol abusers in the U.S. only about 7 million are considered to be alcoholics. Alcoholism is becoming a factor in the three leading causes of death for the ages between 15-24. The average age where kids start to drink is now only thirteen years old. Nearly 4 million kids, almost one-fifth of all alcohol dependent people, are afflicted with a deep dependency to alcohol. The fact that people are pushing for the drinking age to be lowered to eighteen in my opinion would be a huge mistake. Right now teenagers are abusing alcohol and aren’t showing that they can handle drinking alcohol responsibly. So why should the legal age to drink alcohol be moved to 18 when the teenagers are mature enough to handle it? The answer is it shouldn’t be moved up to 18 for those reasons and if drunk driving occurs too much with where it is now then what would happen if we moved the alcohol age up to 18. I can only imagine the rates of drunk driving occurs would sky rocket which means that the number of deaths due to drunk driving would also sky rocket beyond belief. So personally I am happy where the legal drinking age is even if i’m not going to engage in drinking alcohol.

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27. April 2010 by student.

Health has become and increasing issue for people as of late. With American being the fattest (and laziest) nation in the world it’s only natural that it would happen sooner rather than later. Because America is a nation that is so fast paced we tend to ignore healthier diets and activities, treading it in for fast food like McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King, and video games.  You know its bad when you have six and seven year olds weighing easily two, three, and four hundred pounds. What makes it so bad is the kids aren’t doing it to themselves, it’s their parents that start them out on this path, allowing them to eat any and everything that they want whenever they want, giving into their kids just so they don’t have hear them cry. Not realizing that they are putting them on a one way trip to morbid obesity and a mountain of health problems before they reach the age of thirteen. I remember a few years ago a documentary called “Super-Size Me” was released. You might remember it, because it was about the McDonalds industry about how a man ate nothing but McDonald’s everyday for a month. He did what normal people typical do, and ate what they ate, getting little to no exercise. If he didn’t stop when he did he would’ve died.

I don’t think most people really understand how important your health is. Even though you have people who are bedridden and need others help to be taken care of because they are to overweight to move or take care of themselves. It’s actually quiet sad, if we would but realize how many problems we could solve ourselves if we just went for a thirty minute walk every day after each meal, or cut out all of the soda and junk food, even drinking more water every day. But thank God even now as I type more people are starting to realize the benefits of healthful living. More people are opting for not only healthier diets but a lifestyle change, because that’s what it is. The choice to be vegetarian or vegan, to stop eating red meat, even to exercise every day, is a choice and a decision that well affect every single person in this world who makes it for the rest of their lives. In my opinion you don’t have to do all of these special diets (i.e. Atkins diet), all you got to do is eat right, and exercise and you’d be surprised how quickly the weight starts falling off.  The science is out there, and the research has been done. Everything you could possible want and/or need to live a better, healthier, and longer life is out there, the only thing you have to do is be willing to make that conscious decision to do what’s best for you.

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27. April 2010 by student.

Has been a problem for some countries that do not have a strong government. mexico has had problems with their population explosion for the past couple of decades which some people blame to lack of birth control, but their argument is: we cannot afford it. which can be traced back to not having a strong government. So, many citizens of mexico try to find new opportunity by taking drastic measures and risking their lives to try and hop the border fences of america. Little do these citizens know that these fences are heavily guarded by policemen who are armed with machine guns and sniper rifles. all this shows that mexico could use some help with their government and run a stable country

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27. April 2010 by student.

pollution has been a growing concern for the past 20 years. many scientists believe that it is one of the main causes that is linked to global warming. A prime example of this would air pollution from factories all over the world that release harmful chemicals into the atmosphere and the chemicals begin to dissolve the ozone layers. With the diminishing of the ozone layers it has caused some deaths that are linked to heat exhaustion. But, all is not lost due to modern science and the conservation that some people have held back such as using a bike instead of a car and many people help plant trees and other plants and to clean up some of our streets and cities to help our planet out.

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27. April 2010 by student.

It has become very common in our society. most often seen in middle and highschools through out america. There are many reasons the kids and/or students bully on another due social status, race/ethnicity, and wealth. which raises the question: why does one feel the need to have leverage over one another? it could be because they feel the need to make themselves ” feel better” about themselves perhaps to gain a social status or popularity. Bullying is definitely an interesting social topic. My personal opinion: I think it has to do with how the child was raised. I believe that is the catylist that makes the child’s personality is HOW they are raised.

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