8. December 2011 by student.

Most companies and businesses nowadays still do not allow your tattoos or “explicit”/body piercings to show, But why? “ Tattoos and body piercings have become commonplace for professionals in their 20’s and 30’s. According to Laurel Van Buskirk of the New Hampshire Business Review (2005), statistics show that 25-29 year olds have the highest occurrence of tattoos in the workplace. As we as people grow and adapt, you would think something like that would diminish the more that these things appeared in society. but apparently there is something about tattoos and piercings that says ” hi! I’m unprofessional”. Are they distractions, are they obscene, are they immature, what could it be that bans people to casual have their piercings in or have their tattoos showing as long as they are professional, or even at all, at the workplace.
Unfortunately, people judge people based on the way they present themselves, especially in the workplace. Choose your tattoos wisely.  According to a CNN article by Michelle Goodman (2008), Dave Kimmelburg, a lawyer from Boston who is tattooed says that it is better to stick to tattoos and piercings that can be easily covered up if you are going to work in a professional environment.  

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8. December 2011 by student.

Titile-“U.S. and Chinese Officials Duel on Economic Issues” 

A delegation of senior American economic officials led by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. rolled through a long day of meetings Wednesday with their Chinese counterparts, picking and poking at many economic issues while encountering arguments from the Chinese on several fronts.  A stronger Yuan would make exports from
China to the
United States more expensive and American exports to
China cheaper. Some economists say a currency appreciation would ease the trade deficit with China, which soared to nearly $300 billion this year.   “We are not in favor of excessively fast appreciation of Chinese currency,” said Chen Deming, vice minister of commerce, who is scheduled to become the minister next year. American officials say that
China is worried that raising interest rates, slowing the economy and allowing the value of its currency to rise will shrink the economy and throw people out of work, leading to instability.  Other agreements signed by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and Susan C. Schwab, the United States trade representative, called for market openings in some limited areas like exports of American medical devices. American officials were dismayed to learn, for example, of the latest action by the Chinese this week in barring imports of American-made films, many of them
Hollywood blockbusters.  According to American officials, Ms. Schwab in one meeting raised other issues, including what she said was a lack of authorization for American credit cards and insurance services, and also the monopoly of the official news agency Xinhua.  This is going to be an ongoing journey to try and eliviate the debt from America.  With the economy in the state that it is now, our economic future is very unceartian to achieve the hieghts it reached in the early 2000’s.

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8. December 2011 by student.

Although this is an older article, I would still luike to take the time to aknowledge the social problem and shed some light on possible solutions.  According to a report issued on money in
Italy, organized crime represents the biggest segment of the Italian economy with a monstrous 127 billion dollars.  The list goes on from weaving factories, to tourism to business and personal services, from farming to public contrasts and many more.  Criminal activity occurs in almost every economic aspect of
Italy.  Given that, many businesses outside of
Italy would be hesitant to export there goods to an uncertain new area where many problems could be created.  Companies are not going to be willing to send their products where payoffs may have to be undergone and other such activities.  Since organized crime has the highest GDP of your country, many of the products will most likely be made domestically, which assists
Italy’s own economy.  Although there are both pro’s and con’s to this in my eyes the government needs to crack down and let it be known that this can no longer occur.  At first it will be detrimental to the country, but in the long run it should become benificial to both employment rate and the overall economy.

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8. December 2011 by student.

Stress, do you feel any of these symptoms?  Frequent headaches, jaw clenching or pain, cold or sweaty hands, feet, frequent blushing, sweating. You maybe are experiencing stress. Stress is becoming a social problem with today lifestyle. More people are living a stressful life. In the long term stress can rewire the brain, and you may become more pessimistic. You may have higher risk of having a heart attack. 75% of the general population experiences at least “some stress” every two weeks. Ways in which we could moderate stress are by eating healthy and exercising for 15mins three times a week.

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8. December 2011 by student.

The title says it all.  Who can believe this?  Well, its true.A 9 year old boy in North Carolina mentioned to another boy in his class he thought the teacher was “cute”.  She over heard this comment, and apparently took it as an offense. How can this be? The boy is 9 years old, c-mon lady.  The boy now faces a 2 day suspension, for sexual harassment!  Not many other details have been released from the school, as this story seems to have got a lot of media attention.  It is sad that our society has come to a point where a 9 year old boy has to be exposed to the term “sexual harassment”.  Was the teacher not right upstairs when making this claim? I’d think she would take it as a compliment before anything else.I felt this definitely had to be blogged about.-Derek Belair.Here is the Link to the article if you want to view it for yourselves,http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/05/student-9-years-old-suspended-for-sexual-harassment_n_1129683.html?1323107604

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8. December 2011 by student.

After reading an article titled “College dropout factories”, I was stunned as to how bad of a problem it has become in the U.S.  School systems have been taking advantage of people by appearing like a seemingly great place to go, with opportunities available galore.  They make it seem like such an exciting college to attend, but then just basically forget and ignore about guiding them towards a graduation goal. It was also very shocking that this was mainly driven by money, to create an increase in revenue for the school. ( The more students you have, the more money you have comming in of course ). 

The article did not say which college, But it tells a story about a school president at one of these schools that took faculty and relatives on a 9 day cruise, as part of a “Leadership conference”. That paragraph made me laugh, as one would not think something like this would happen with school money. Apparently it did, and the woman was caught of course. At least justice was served. 

 I had never even heard of these issues until moving away from where I grew up, which is another great example of how education differs in different regions of our country. As this growing education problem is more realized by the people of our country, instead of talking about it through the media, we need to be starting to find more solutions and take action toward fixing this problem.        

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8. December 2011 by student.

Smoking kills!! We see, hear and talk about it everywhere. Smoking in this century has for million of people have become a habit. Although is bad for health we still do it, smoking  and smoking related issues has become a social problem. Smoking has become a multimillion business. ach day in the United States, approximately 4,000 adolescents aged 12-17 try their first cigarette, Each year cigarette smoking accounts for approximately 1 of every 5 deaths, or about 438,000 people. Cigarette smoking results in 5.5 million years of potential life lost in the United States annually, Although the percentage of high school students who smoke has declined in recent years, rates remain high: 19% of high school students report current cigarette use (smoked cigarettes on at least 1 day during the 30 days before the survey), Forty-six percent of high school students have ever tried cigarette smoking, even one or two puffs, Eleven percent of high school students have smoked a whole cigarette before age 13,Nearly 9% of high school students (15% of male and 2% of female students) used smokeless tobacco (e.g., chewing tobacco, snuff, or dip), on at least 1 day during the 30 days before the survey.³ Adolescents who use smokeless tobacco are more likely than nonusers to become cigarette smokers, Fourteen percent of high school students smoked cigars, cigarillos, or little cigars on at least 1 day during the 30 days before the survey. Although there are regulations on smoking; people still find their way to smoke cigarette. Maybe next time you see an ad on smoking you should be a little more conscious and be aware of what is in the cigarette your smoking, and what harm does it do in your system.

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8. December 2011 by student.

Between 1952 and 1995, suicide in young adults nearly tripled, over half of all suicides occur in adult men, ages 25-65, in the month prior to their suicide, 75%

Suicide takes the lives of nearly 30,000 Americans every year, the strongest risk factor for suicide is depression, in 2004 it is estimated there were 811,000 suicide attempts in the
US, There are three female suicide attempts for each male attempt.

 What do these statics show us? That suicide is becoming a social problem, is this social problem we could control or maybe stop? Society is what makes people become depressed and as stated, depression is the main reason for suicide. If we break it down, are we responsible for other people depression? In some way we could be a possible reason why people become depressed. Is in the nature of people to be mean, it’s a dog eat dog world. Maybe if we were a little nicer with people; people wouldn’t be as depressed, have a smile in their face.

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8. December 2011 by student.

I chose an article from the New York Times called “Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits”.  I feel the article really makes you aware of many ideas, from a 3^rd person perspective. It is one thing to study in your own way, but I thought it was really cool to be able to read something that summarizes study habits so well. After the summer, I agree it is hard to get back in “the groove” of your daily school schedule. You need to refocus your time management, separating things such as your Committed, maintenance, and discretionary time. Being able to separate these times of your day, and to keep to a set schedule is certainly what will help a person succeed. Most people in college for example, look forward to all the socializing and the meeting of new people. What separates the people who most succeed and get good grades are usually the people who are aware they need to take care of committed time, before figuring out what time to go out with their friends. I love how in the article shows the effects of different study habits, and how it backs them with studies and results. Spending an hour on one class, then maybe switching to a different class for an hour makes it easier for the brain to store the information. When I personally sit down to read or study, I like it being quiet in the background. I usually shut off the television or any other noise distractions. Now, if I read at the library for example, its relatively quiet with the exception that putting on headphones might be needed to help concentrate. I know everyone is different in how they need to study, so you may be able to relate to this or not. This was certainly a very interesting read on how each individual needs to figure their own way to learn and retain information. Articles such as this are what helps people to be aware of the things you can do to improve the retaining of information.

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8. December 2011 by student.

“According to the American Psychological association and also published online in APA’s journal of personality and social psychology, the less people know about important complex issues in our world, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed”. Also, the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware. It’s almost like people really don’t care about the problems going on around us.  The entirety of “ignorance being bliss” can be great but sometimes we need to open our eyes to the real problems around us. It disgusted me at first to be reading this article,”ignorance is bliss when it comes to challenging social issues” by science daily, it disgusted me how people did not want to be informed of the things around them, but after i got to thinking, their doing what they can to make themselves happy. which is good for them. It seems as though we as a nation just keep messing things up, its one stupid mistake after another, or one billion dollars deeper in dept, its ridiculous how bad news is almost all we hear anymore, so my guess is these people are just tired of listening. I know i am. My approach to this problem would be almost right along side the ignorance is bliss theory, i can not do much to help most of these complex issues but ill do what i can when i can, and through that i would need to know of our existing problems. I do not have a solution to this problem because i can not change the minds of millions and we can not force people to do as we will, that much..  but i think if we just guided our people in the right direction, show people what is going on, things may change for the better. i don’t see much good rising out of the people of whom ignorantly disregard our worldly issues, and the people who are so involved and doing everything they can to change this world/ country, well from what  see, its only one mistake after another.
“In one study, participants who felt most affected by the economic recession avoided information challenging the government’s ability to manage the economy. However, they did not avoid positive information, the study said. This study comprised 197 Americans with a mean age of 35 (111 women and 89 men), who had received complex information about the economy and had answered a question about how the economy is affecting them directly.

To test the links among dependence, trust and avoidance, researchers provided either a complex or simple description of the economy to a group of 58 Canadians, mean age 42, composed of 20 men and 38 women. The participants who received the complex description indicated higher levels of perceived helplessness in getting through the economic downturn, more dependence on and trust in the government to manage the economy, and less desire to learn more about the issue.”
Just open your eyes.
-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121142446.htm“

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