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Bhavya Puri

Shark fin soup alters an ecosystem - Page 2 - CNN - 0 views

  • Shark finning is not illegal. Taiwan has no law against fins taken from international waters coming into its ports. However, Taiwan does have what it calls a "plan of action" that requires the bodies of the sharks the fins came from to be accounted for and not dumped into the sea.
  • but identifying them and monitoring them and having a regulated fishery is virtually impossible."
  • Taiwan is not alone. Shark finning thrives off weak regulations around the world and only a few countries demand that sharks arrive in port with fins attached.
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  • The fin is one of the most expensive pound-for-pound item from the sea. And the beauty about the fin is that it's very compact ... it doesn't take up your hull and you can make a lot of money from it,"
  • ins can sell for $500 per pound, according to WildAid, which is campaigning for a global ban on shark finning.In recent years, Cocos Island has become another battleground in the fight to save the shark. Ads by GoogleShark Breaching and DivesGreat White Shark Breaching and Cage Diving Trips Gansbaai www.sharkdivingunlimited.com<<<123>>> We recommend You might like: Push begins to halt Pacific shark finning - CNN CNN.comSharks endangered by a bowl of soup CNN OpinionShark researchers study oil impact CNN USMan saves Australian woman during shark attack CNN World onmousedo
Anushka Gandhi

U.S. Plan Envisions Path to Ending Afghan Combat - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • NATO summit meeting
    • Anushka Gandhi
       
      NATO- North Atlantic Treaty Organization
  • Mr. Obama was able to pull out two-thirds of United States forces from Iraq and declare America’s combat mission there over
    • Anushka Gandhi
       
      If Obama continues ro work efficiently like he did in this case the process of withdrawal of American troops can become quicker
Simran Fabiani

Eating Disorders and the Media | Media Influence on Eating Disorders | Anorexia | Bulim... - 0 views

  • Okay, so we all want to hear how Calvin Klein is the culprit and that the emaciated waif look has caused women to tale-spin into the world of Eating Disorders. While the images of child-like women has obviously contributed to an increased obsession to be thin, and we can't deny the media influence on eating disorders, there's a lot more to it than that.
  • Images on T.V. spend countless hours telling us to lose weight, be thin and beautiful, buy more stuff because people will like us and we'll be better people for it. Programming on the tube rarely depicts men and women with "average" body-types or crappy clothes, ingraining in the back of all our minds that this is the type of life we want. O
  • characters are typically portrayed as lazy
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  • while thin women and pumped-up men are the successful, popular, sexy and powerful ones. How can we tell our children that it's what's inside that counts, when the media continuously contradicts this message?
  • Super models in all the popular magazines have continued to get thinner and thinner.
  • Modeling agencies have been reported to actively pursue Anorexic models.
  • he average woman model weighs up to 25% less
  • han the typical woman and maintains a weight at about 15 to 20 percent below what is considered healthy for her age and height.
  • By far, these body types and images are not the norm and unobtainable
  • Diet advertisements are another problem.
  • hese images are fake.
  • the ideal body" combined with the diet industry's drive to make more money, creates a never-ending cycle of ad upon ad that try to convince us
  • Pop-culture's imposed definition of
  • Barbie-type dolls have often been blamed on playing a role in the development of body-image problems and Eating Disorders.
  • Not only do these dolls have fictionally proportioned, small body sizes, but they lean towards escalating the belief that materialistic possessions, beauty and thinness equate happiness.
  • Barbie has more accessories available to purchase than can be believed, including Ken, her attractive boyfriend.
  • personally do NOT believe every girl that has a Barbie-type doll is at risk of disordered eating,
  • We need to remind ourselves and each other constantly (especially children) that
  • With an increased population of children who spend a lot of time in front of television, there are more of them coming up with a superficial sense of who they are.
  • we are continually exposed to the notion that losing weight will make us happier and it will be through "THIS diet plan".
  • if you lose weight, your life will be good."
  • These images may not help, and for those already open to the possibility of negative coping mechanisms and/or mental illness, the media may play a small contributing role -- but ultimately, if a young man or woman's life situation, environment, and/or genetics leave them open to an Eating Disorder (or alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, OCD, etc.), they will still end up in the same place regardless of television or magazines.
  • it helps to perpetuate an ideal of materialism, beauty, and being thin as important elements to happiness in one's life.
Ben Walters

Were video games to blame for massacre? - Technology & science - Games - msnbc.com - 0 views

  • The shooting on the Virginia Tech campus was only hours old, police hadn't even identified the gunman, and yet already the perpetrator had been fingered and was in the midst of being skewered in the media.
  • Video games. They were to blame for the dozens dead and wounded. They were behind the bloodiest massacre in U.S. history. Or so Jack Thompson told Fox News and, in the days that followed, would continue to tell anyone who'd listen.
  • But whether Seung-Hui Cho, the student who opened fire Monday, was an avid player of video games and whether he was a fan of "Counter-Strike" in particular remains, even now, uncertain at best.
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  • Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the school shootings and the finger-pointing that followed, game players and industry advocates say they're outraged that the brutal acts of a deeply disturbed and depressed loner with a history of mental illness would be blamed so quickly on video and computer games. They say this is perhaps the most flagrant case of anti-game crusaders using a tragedy to promote their own personal causes.
  • "It's so sad. These massacre chasers — they're worse than ambulance chasers — they're waiting for these things to happen so they can jump on their soapbox," said Jason Della Rocca,
    • Ben Walters
       
      'common sense tells me'
  • When Jack Thompson gets worked up, he refers to gamers as "knuckleheads." He calls video games "mental masturbation." When he's talking about himself and his crusade against violent games, he calls himself an "educator." He likes to use the word "pioneer."
  • On those rare occasions when a student opens fire on a school campus, Thompson is frequently the first and the loudest to declare games responsible. In recent years he's blamed games such as "Counter-Strike," "Doom" and "Grand Theft Auto III" for school shootings in Littleton, Colo., Red Lake, Minn. and Paducah, Ky.
  • He's blamed them for shootings beyond school grounds as well. In an attempt to hold game developers and publishers responsible for these spasms of violence, Thompson has launched several unsuccessful lawsuits.
  • "It disgusts me," said Isaiah Triforce Johnson, a longtime gamer and founder of a New York-based gaming advocacy group that, in response to the accusations, is now planning what is the first ever gamer-driven peace rally. 
  • Microsoft did not create "Counter Strike" but did publish a version of it for the Xbox.
  • authorities released a search warrant listing the items found in Cho's dorm room. Not a single video game, console or gaming gadget was on the list, though a computer was confiscated. And in an interview with Chris Matthews of "Hardball," Cho's university suite-mate said he had never seen Cho play video games.
  • "This is not rocket science. When a kid who has never killed anyone in his life goes on a rampage and looks like the Terminator, he's a video gamer,"
  • And in a letter sent to Bill Gates Wednesday, he wrote: "Mr. Gates, your company is potentially legally liable (for) the harm done at Virginia Tech. Your game, a killing simulator, according to the news that used to be in the Post, trained him to enjoy killing and how to kill."
    • Ben Walters
       
      See how bad his research is, the only possibility of him ever playing a game was on his computer, yet he blames Microsoft, who created a game for the Xbox (which would be incompatible for a PC) for directly and massively influencing these events.
    • Ben Walters
       
      Counter Strike, the game he blamed for these killings, has two objectives. Protect an objective from a bomb that the team of terrorists are going to try to plant, or to plant this bomb. Neither of these objectives have to include murder, or solo missions.
  • Fed up with the scapegoating and lack of understanding, gamer groups have begun to get increasingly organized in their attempts to change public perception of their favorite hobby.
  • While Thompson concedes that there are many elements that must have driven Cho to commit such a brutal act, he insists that without video games Cho wouldn't have had the skills to do what he did. "He might have killed somebody but he wouldn't have killed 32 if he hadn't rehearsed it and trained himself like a warrior on virtual reality. It can't be done. It just doesn't happen."
  • Dr. Karen Sternheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern Calfornia and author of the book " Kids These Days: Facts and Fictions About Today's Youth," disagrees. She believes that it didn't require much skill for Cho to shoot as many people as he did. After all, eye witness accounts indicate many of the victims were shot at point-blank range.
  • And for all of Thompson's claims that violent video games are the cause of school shootings, Sternheimer points out that before this week's Virginia Tech massacre, the most deadly school shooting in history took place at the University of Texas in Austin… in 1966. Not even "Pong" had been invented at that time.
  • Sternheimer says the rush to blame video games in these situations is disingenuous for yet another reason. Although it remains unclear whether Cho played games, it seems nobody will be surprised if it turns out he did. After all, what 23-year-old man living in America hasn't played video games?
  • "Especially if you're talking about young males, the odds are pretty good that any young male in any context will have played video games at some point,"
  • "I think in our search to find some kind of answer as to why this happened, the video game explanation seems easy," she says. "It seems like there's an easy answer to preventing this from happening again and that feels good on some level."
  • The blame game
  • Jason Della Rocca agrees. "Everyone wants a simple solution for a massively complex problem. We want to get on with our lives."
  • As the leader of an organization that represents video game creators from all over the world, Della Rocca knows the routine all too well.
  • Someone opens fire on a school campus. Someone blames video games. His phone starts ringing. People start asking him questions like, "So how bad are these games anyway?"
  • Of course, he also knows that this is far from the first time in history that a young form of pop culture has been blamed for any number of society's ills. Rock and roll was the bad guy in the 1950s. Jazz was the bad guy in the 1930s. Movies, paintings, comic books, works of literature…they've all been there.
  • Still, Della Rocca believes that people like Thompson are "essentially feeding off the fears of those who don't understand games."
  • For those who didn't grow up playing video games, the appeal of a game like "Counter-Strike" can be hard to comprehend. It can be difficult to understand that the game promotes communication and team work. It can be hard fathom how players who love to run around gunning down their virtual enemies do not have even the slightest desire to shoot a person in real life.
  • "It's the thing they don't understand," Della Rocca says. "It's a thing that's scary."
  • "You cannot tell me — common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they're on a mass killing spree in a video game, it's glamorized on the big screen, it's become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high. And we're going to have to start dealing with that."
  • the members of Empire Arcadia — a grassroots group dedicated to supporting the gaming community and culture — have been so incensed by the recent attempts to blame video games for the Virginia Tech shootings that they've begun planning a rally in New York City with the assistance of the ECA.
  • "There we will protest, mourn and show how real gamers play video games peacefully and responsibly," organizer Johnson wrote on the group's Web site. "This demonstration is to show that gamers will not take the blame of this tragic matter but we will do what we can to help put an end to terrible events like this." Johnson says that, ultimately, he hopes the rally — scheduled for May 5 — will help people better understand video game enthusiasts like him. "We are normal people," he says. "We just play games."
Anushka Gandhi

American General Assesses Foe in Iraq, And Friend - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • American and Iraqi successes targeting the leadership and financing of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other terrorist networks.
    • Anushka Gandhi
       
      "Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" (also called "Al-Qaeda in Iraq) is a decentralized collection of terrorist groups that have taken responsibility for the number of suicide attacks and car bombings throughout Iraq since the organization's formation.
  • He noted a series of bank robberies and attacks in recent months targeting gold markets — as well as a series of bloody attacks, especially in Baghdad.
  • General Austin, a veteran of two previous tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, took over command from Gen. Ray Odierno on Sept. 1, coinciding with the declared end of the American combat mission here.
    • Anushka Gandhi
       
      General Ray Odierno is the Commander of United States Military Forces in Iraq
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  • and is to participate in talks with the Iraqi government about what, if any, American force might beyond that deadline.
  • the American military mission was to help the Iraqis build “an internal defense capability and a foundation for an external defense capability.”
    • Anushka Gandhi
       
      Iraqis need some support for protecting their country from any further suicice attacks or car bombings, etc. Therefore US is their ally, but it seems that US is not only wanting to protect this country completely for the country's benefit, they need the Iraqis to support them against any more Al-Qaeda attacks or other terrorist networks' attacks.
  • He praised the capabilities of Iraq’s security forces, particularly in the aftermath of the country’s inconclusive election in March.
  • The focus of American assistance to Iraqi forces between now and the planned 2011 withdrawal was on their ability to sustain troops in the field and build “an intelligence architecture” able to collect, share and exploit information about threats.
  • Ultimately, General Austin said, defeating Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks in Iraq would not be solely a military solution, but rather the establishment of the rule of law and the maturation of the country’s government and its ability to oversee even mundane things like issuing license plates and identity cards, which would narrow the space in which terrorists operate.
Ben Walters

Part 2 - How video games are good for the brain - The Boston Globe - 0 views

  • A type of scan that illuminates brain activity showed that at the end of the three months, the girls’ brains were working less hard to complete the game’s challenges. What’s more, parts of the cortex, the outer layer of their brains responsible for high-level functions, actually got thicker. Several of these regions are associated with visual spatial abilities, planning, and integration of sensory data.
  • Other researchers are hoping to use video games to encourage prosocial behaviors - actions designed to help others.
  • Generalizability to non-game situations is the big question surrounding other emerging games, particularly software that is being marketed explicitly as a way to keep neurons spry as we age. The jury is still out on whether practicing with these games helps people outside of the context of the game. In one promising 2008 study, however, senior citizens who started playing Rise of Nations, a strategic video game devoted to acquiring territory and nation building, improved on a wide range of cognitive abilities, performing better on subsequent tests of memory, reasoning, and multitasking. The tests were administered after eight weeks of training on the game. No follow-up testing was done to assess whether the gains would last.
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  • Now that researchers know these off-the-shelf games can have wide-ranging benefits, they’re trying to home in on the games’ most important aspects, potentially allowing designers to create new games that specifically boost brain power.
  • “Until now, people have been asking can you learn anything from games?’’ MIT’s Klopfer said. “That’s a less interesting question than what aspects of games are important for fostering learning.’’
  • Do students learn more with a more narrative game?
  • is assessing whether games that are novel, include social interaction, and require intense focus are better at boosting cognitive skills. McLaughlin and her colleagues will use the findings to design games geared toward improving mental function among the elderly.
  • Does this mean that Tetris is good for your brain?’’ Haier said. “That is the big question. We don’t know that just because you become better at playing Tetris after practice and your brain changes . . . whether those changes generalize to anything else.’’
  • an international team of researchers, including several from Iowa State University, reported that middle school students in Japan who played games in which characters helped or showed affection for others, later engaged in more of these behaviors themselves.
  • Researchers also found that US college students randomly assigned to play a prosocial game were subsequently kinder to a fellow research subject than students who played violent or neutral games.
  • Unlike, say, movies or books, video games don’t just have content, they also have rules. A game is set up to reward certain actions and to punish others. This means they have immense potential to teach children ethics and values
  • (Of course, this is a double-edged sword. Games could reward negative, antisocial behavior just as easily as positive, prosocial behavior.)
  • Some off-the-shelf games already contain strong prosocial themes
  • he classic Oregon Trail, which make players responsible for the well-being of other characters and feature characters who take care of one another.
  • “Ultimately, the video game needs to be an entertaining experience,’’ Seider said. “The game has to be fun.’’
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