11. December 2010 by student.

Eating disorders are a serious health problem. Personal Counseling & Resources says that eating disorders “are characterized by a focus on body shape, weight, fat, food, and perfectionism and by feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem.” Three of the most common  eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating or compulsive eating disorder. According to Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, a person with anorexia “refuses to maintain normal body weight for age and height” and “weighs 85 percent or less than what is what is expected for age and height.” A person diagnosed with bulimia has several ways of getting rid of the calories such as binge eating, vomiting, laxative misuse, exercising, or fasting. The person might have a normal weight for their age and height unless anorexia is present. The signs of a compulsive eater include eating meals frequently, rapidly, and secretly. This person might also snack and nibble all day long. The compulsive eater tends to have a history of diet failures and may be depressed or obese.

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10. December 2010 by student.

Smoking is a hard habit to break because tobacco contains nicotine, which is highly addictive. Like heroin or other addictive drugs, the body and mind quickly become so used to the nicotine in cigarettes that a person needs to have it just to feel normal. People start smoking for a variety of different reasons. Some think it looks cool. Others start because their family members or friends smoke.We all know that smoking is bad for us. On the news all the time they have something about smoking and why it is so bad for you. Even on the cigarette box there is a surgeon general message. This message is a note saying that Cigarette are hazardous to your health. But still millions of people still are smoking. I see it like this… If they put a label on a cigarette box saying “These will eventually kill you” people will still smoke it. We all know the dangers of smoking, why not put a law out to make it illegal? I think the reason people are not comprehending that smoking is so bad for them, is because they are already addicted and they don’t care what it does to them. But if a law made it illegal to sell. Then many people would not have access to cigarettes. So they will not smoke and millions of lives would be saved each year. Smoking produces lung cancer that eventually kills a person. The lungs will turn black and you can barely breath. I feel that there should be laws against smoking and try to stop it before its too late.Statistics show that about 9 out of 10 tobacco users start before they’re 18 years old. Most adults who started smoking in their teens never expected to become addicted. That’s why people say it’s just so much easier to not start smoking at all.

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10. December 2010 by student.

Gun control has been a controversial issue for years. A vast majority of citizens believe that if gun control is strictly enforced it would quickly reduce the threat of crime. Many innocent people feel they have the right to bear arms for protection, or even for the pleasure of hunting. These people are penalized for protecting their lives, or even for enjoying a common, innocent sport. To enforce gun control throughout the nation, means violating a persons Constitutional rights. Although some people feel that the issue of gun control will limit crime, the issue should not exist due to the fact that guns are necessary for self defense against crime, and by enforcing gun control is violating a citizens second amendment right to bear arms. One can tell that the gun control issue should not be strict because there are people out in the world wont feel safe unless they carry a gun or any other weapon. However, in order for people to have this weapon, first they need to have a License. Second they need to be responsible and not mess around with it because it can ruin a person life just by doing a little mistake.

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10. December 2010 by student.

Drinking has always been a problem for teenagers and adolts, particularly for the past few years. “Research shows that over 60% of high school seniors drink at least once a week”, although the law does not make drinking legal until age 21.   In reality, kids are drinking at increasingly younger ages.  why do people use alcohol when they know it’s forbidden? people give various reasons; with most saying they drink for enjoyment, to be accepted by friends, to forget problems, and to reduce stress in their lives. all of these reasons should not be taking in mind or people should not think it this way because alcohol can harm their body.The effects alcohol can have on a body are numerous. It increases the workload of the heart, causing irregular heartbeat and high blood pressure. It poisons the liver, causing extensive damage and failure. It can stop the kidneys from maintaining a proper balance of body fluids and minerals; it can also affect the brain, causing unclear thinking. Large amounts of it can cause unconsciousness or death. Even knowing this some people will still make bad and dangerous choices when it comes to alcohol. “One of the most dangerous things you can do is, driving under the influence (D.U.I)”. Not only are you endangering yourself, you are endangering your passenger, other road users, and pedestrians. “Every year more than 7,000 people are injured from alcohol related crashes, and more than 16,000 die”. That means every 30 minutes someone is involved in an accident that involves alcohol. Within those crashes innocent people are killed. Alcohol can change a person’s life in an instant. One bad decision caused by drinking could lead up to someone loosing their life. Even people know that it is wrong they say to their selves, “this could never happen to me,” so they do it. Today we need to stop and think, is a drink worth killing someone over.

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10. December 2010 by student.

“Suicide is the eleventh most common cause of death in the United States”. People may consider suicide when they are hopeless and can’t see any other solution to their problems. Often it’s related to serious depression, alcohol or substance abuse, or a major stressful event.Most teens interviewed after making a suicide attempt say that they did it because they were trying to escape from a situation that seemed impossible to deal with or to get relief from really bad thoughts or feelings. “Some of those who try to commute suicide that they didn’t want to die as much as they wanted to escape from what was going on”. And at that particular moment dying seemed like the only way out. Some people who end their lives or attempt suicide might be trying to escape feelings of rejection, hurt, or loss. Others might be angry, ashamed, or guilty about something. Some people may be worried about disappointing friends or family members. And some may feel unwanted, unloved, victimized, or like they’re a burden to others. moreover, I think that no one will commute suicide and kill their selves unless they have a mental illness or something wrong in their mind. It is  a must for parent, friends and to home it concerns to watch if anyone they know was mentally ill, and if there is, they should take them for treatment before it’s too late or before they kill tier selves.

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10. December 2010 by Mr. Andoscia.

It’s been a great semester everybody. Have a great break!

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10. December 2010 by student.

People in the world has problems no matter what they are or how big or small it is. There are many ways people can deal with their problems. They can go and get therapy from a licensed counselor, talk to their pastor at church or attend a community group. they can always talk to a friend or loved one. Some people could not handle stress for example a guy get laid off his job that he has has for over 15 years. He comes back and kill everyone there than hisself. He didn’t know how to face his problems. The government has a lot of resources out there to help the needy we just have to look for them. Life will go on we just have to learn how to deal with things and face our fears of the world. Some people can’t stand to be rejected and from rejection they harm others and from their actions leads them jail. Some people can cope no matter the the situation is because they are determined to be the best in life. Come on people we are human and we are going to have problems so let’s just help each other.

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10. December 2010 by student.

If you were to take a boat trip to the Pacific Ocean you may see whales, dolphins, fish and tons of marine life.  But as you get closer to the North Pacific around the subtropical gyre you would see a totally diffrent site.  Stretching across miles and miles of the Pacific Ocean there is a mass the size of Texas made of plastic.  Water bottles, plastic bags, plastic containers, and bubble rap spread across the our beautiful ocean.  And the possibility of a recovery looks grim, according to the Marine Research Foundation they expect to mass to have grown over ten fold by the end of this year.  They have also found another growing mass of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean that seems to be growing as well.  Now you are probably asking how did all that plastic get into one gigantic mass?  Because of the oceans currents garbage is collected for thousands of miles and then dropped into the North Pacific.  This plastic mass is causing harm to our aquatic environment.  Not only is the fish population greatly affected by our garbage, but so are birds who can get their necks caught in the garbage.  Because the birds neck is caught it can have trouble feeding which can lead death.  Dolphins can suffer from the same tragic experience when their mouths can be held shut by some plastic. Even though the issue of being green is becoming more popular, there is still only 4% of our plastic being recycled.  Out nation needs to be more aware of where our trash is going.  We also need to really start recycling to help save our beautiful planet.      

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10. December 2010 by student.

As the world around us continues to prosper with the use of technology and the improvements of many resources. The United States can not keep up and compete with the countries such as China, Japan, and South America. The U.S. is in such debt that we can’t afford to continue to borrow money from other countries to keep up with the competition. Every 30 seconds a million dollars is added on. Years and years could not pay off 13 trillion dollars. This debt is so great that our countries stability is decreasing we might be the melting pot country and people want to migrate here for the so called “American dream”, but honestly there is not dreams to be achieved in a country who has no money and continues to put themselves in a deeper hole. When does this issue stop and become too much.

It is just a matter of time that our country will be taken over by a country such as China who in sense owns us due to how much money we owe them. How can we keep taking money from them with the incentive that we know we will not be able to pay them back. This is going to lead to something we try to avoid which is war. Eventually the tables will turn and the U.S. is going to be attacked and we won’t be prepared. There needs to be an end to this spending money we don’t have.

I don’t have any input in government spending, as most American’s don’t, no more than I would over say, my neighbors obscene credit card spending. Just because I know my neighbor is doing it, does not make me responsible for his irresponsible actions.

Would you accept an IOU from your neighbor if you knew he already had 13 trillion IOUs already out there and made it clear he had no intention whatsoever of ever redeeming them for any value at all. And for the most part, all he used your money for was to buy weapons to try and protect himself from the inevitable back lash and day of reckoning that was coming which angry merchants came back to his door to demand real payment for the money he owed you?
The people in America blaintly refuse to pay off the U.S. government debt. Let the politicians who blew the money on their fancy fat paychecks and women and nice offices pay up the money to bail out their government, or let it go bankrupt like it should and which is the natural order of things.

The future generations are going to suffer more than any other due to the debt and countries tormoil from the government. We are considerably lucky that the countries we owe to haven’t decided to demolish us yet.

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10. December 2010 by student.

  Recently there has been much controversy over the construction of an Islamic community center near ground zero in New York. The problem that arises is because the center is going to include a small place for people of Muslim faith to come and pray; many people think that it would be inappropriate due to it’s close proximity to the ground zero site. When I hear this, I always just can’t seem to understand why this is the case. On 9/11, America was attacked by a group of radical Islamic terrorists and the key words here are radical and terrorists. These people took the message of the Qu’ran, which is much like the bible and never directly advocates violence, and misconstrued the word in it to meet their own personal needs to poison the minds of a select few. These select few were basically brainwashed into thinking that they were doing the right thing and dying for their god; eventually these people were the ones that ended up flying the planes into the WTC. We should not and we can not hold the rest of the worlds population of Muslims accountable for the actions and ideologies of a very select few. If this were to be the case then why don’t we also start to hold Christianity and catholicism for all the pain and suffering they have caused over the many years in the name of god? The Crusades, Killings at or the bombings of abortion clinics are just a couple that I can name off the top of my head. And lets not forget the good amount of Islamic people that also died in those attacks on the WTC. Would it be fair to deny these families the opportunity to pray for their loved ones just because of their religion? Secondly I would like to dispell some of the preconceived notions that the media has maybe already put into your head.  The term Ground Zero Mosque” is a pretty bad way to describe what is actually going on here because the site of where it’s going to be is neither at ground zero or is it technically a mosque. Sure, it will have a space where people of Islamic faith can go to pray but that would be just an extremely small part of what the entire  center thats being built here. It’s mainly going to be an Islamic community center in which people of all faiths will be welcome. It would include a gym, swimming pool, basketball court, 500 seat auditorium, a full size restaurant that will actually double as a culinary school, and even a library with an art studio which will teach ESOL/GED classes. Overall this sounds to me like a great addition to the surrounding community where the most noticeable landmark would be and AT&T store a couple doors down. I don’t see why people make it such a big deal also because its actually 2 blocks down from the ground zero site and, if you were to take a car from ground zero to there, you’d actually have to make quite a trip because of the many 1 way streets in New York. Why is 2 blocks not good enough for some people; If you do your research and look at the area then you’d also see that there are a number of strip clubs that are the within the same distance of ground zero if not closer. Why is it OK for those to be there but not an Islamic Community center? Freedom of Religion is probably one of the biggest reasons that this country was founded. Was it really that long ago that the pilgrims were tired of the persecution they  in England and decided to move to the new world? All those groups that are currently trying to stop the building of this center need to take a good look at what this country is about and how it all started. This country made up of many different races and beliefs and who are they to say that their beliefs or ideologies are better that a Muslim persons.

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