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Yasmin Tandon

Aid Needs Help - By Raymond Offenheiser | Foreign Policy - 1 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...aid_needs_help

Foreign Aid History problems help needs

shared by Yasmin Tandon on 12 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • confused and conflicting responsibilities, mandates and authorities, with no clear goals, and no shared vision.
  • very real costs for U.S. foreign policy and the world's poor.
  • El Salvador,
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • responsibility for U.S. aid is shared between 11 different government agencies, each with different agendas and sometimes conflicting priorities.
  • Kenya,
  • United States procures its own HIV/AIDS test kits a
  • AIDS drugs at four times the cost other donors pay
  • Bangladesh
  • United States collects several times the amount in tariffs than it provides in development assistance, essentially taxing the very trade U.S. leaders tout as the solution to poverty
  • Cambodia, government officials typically find it easier to get information on aid resources from the Chinese government than from the U.S. government
  • Afghanistan -
  • civilian surge
  • humanitarian aid efforts has been promised -- two separate USAID contractors recently discovered by chance they were doing virtually the same project, in the same town.
  • 2 billion people -
  • trapped in poverty poses a singular challenge to the interests and values of the United State
  • What's This?TranslateWhat's This?Return
  • But his. government is still trying to address this 21st-century challenge with a 20th-century toolkit.
  • Previous attempts to reform the aid system have only complicated the situation.
  • The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 integrates 140 different goals and priorities and 400 directives, and is executed by at least 12 departments, 25 different agencies, and almost 60 government offices. Moreover, successive presidents and congresses have often chosen to work around the act, enacting more than 20 additional pieces of legislation to achieve their foreign-aid goals. As a result, the existing system's mission has become muddled and confused, cluttered with earmarks, special coordinators, and loopholes.
Mihikaa Naik

"The Mozart Effect": A Small Part of the Big Picture - 0 views

www.musica.uci.edu/...V7I1W00.html

mozart effect big picture

shared by Mihikaa Naik on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • the Mozart Effect actually does not increase general intelligence and lasts only a few minutes, it does not provide a substitute for music study and practice.
  • Studies have shown that music education and music-making have positive effects on many mental and behavioral factors that are themselves not part of music.
  • mass media have played a major role in starting and maintaining public excitement about the Mozart Effect.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • This story began in 1993 when Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine Ky published a brief paper in the prestigious journal Nature
  • . The report by Rauscher, Shaw and Ky suggested that listening to music actually caused the brain to perform better in spatial reasoning, at least for a few minutes.
  • Mozart Effect was born as the idea that listening to Mozart increases intelligence
  • In short, they argue that the Mozart Effect is caused by a more pleasant mood.
  • Mozart Effect described here applies to children
  • long term involvement in music lessons
  • the question is whether or not brief exposure to certain music can produce long term improvements in intelligence, either limited to spatial/temporal abilities or to more general intelligence, then the answer is no.
  • Understanding and appreciating musical forms, genres, meanings and performances in historical, social and cultural context
  • Educated Listening in music classes for one or more school years
  • Reading musical notation, integrating sight, sound, touch and movements to perform and express self musically, solo, in cooperative group or both
  • Instrumental or vocal lessons and regular practice for several years
  • Mozart Effect requires only 10 minutes of exposure (not necessarily even attentive listening) to music.
Dillon Patel

White House report says people cause global warming - 27 August 2004 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...ople-cause-global-warming.html

main cause global warming white house humans

shared by Dillon Patel on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • White House report says people cause global warming
  • People are responsible for the spike in global warming in the last 30 years, says a new US government report.
  • enact policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • Our Changing Planet
  • climate change research by 13 government agencies.
  • The document reports that global warming in the first half of the 20th century, estimated at 0.2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, "was likely due to natural climate variation", including increased solar activity.
  • can only be explained when factors related to human activity
  • "There's nothing else we can blame it on, really,"
  • "If we don't put the changes in carbon dioxide into our models, we don't get global warming out."
  • "Well over 98% of scientists competent in this area would agree with that," he told New Scientist.
  • "The big question is what effect this will have on climate policy," Janetos told New Scientist.
  • that would be big news indeed."
  • Trenberth agrees, saying Bush's policy thus far has been to "take whatever nature throws at us
  • "Bush has said that if we do something about emissions, it will hurt the economy,"
  • Others experts have lobbied the government to regulate carbon dioxide through the Clean Air Act.
  • "This research will help decision makers and managers in the US and other countries evaluate and respond to climate change."
  • Dillon Patel on 14 Nov 10
     
    According to the white house, humans are the main cause. Reliable source.
Ben Walters

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

www.boston.com/...o_games_are_good_for_the_brain

Entertainment Brain Learning Education Video Games Society Psychology

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - Cached
  • 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.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • 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.’’
Aneesh Mysore

Grand Theft Auto: Do Video Games Cause Behavior Problems? - 0 views

www.suite101.com/...grand-theft-auto-a22850

grand theft auto

shared by Aneesh Mysore on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • “You play as a thug with problems you must steal and shoot your way out of, but the problems this time are disconcertingly more realistic.
  • (ie: of the level that shoots and steals his way out of problems?? Wouldn’t this indicate some psychopathic tendencies? Do parents actually buy this game for kids?)
  • The killing and stealing bothers this writer not at all, just the curse words. And, there is this comment, barely literate and disturbing: “dis game is tight the graphocs rock one thing i enjoy is that you get to kill people and take peoples nice cars and in one mission u can buy a big plane like ones at the airports”.
golan elzur

Animal Experiments / Animal Liberation Victoria - 1 views

www.alv.org.au/...experiments.php

animals ethics experiments

shared by golan elzur on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • As far back as the 2nd Century, Roman physician, Galen falsely believed that animals possessed the same physiology as humans and performed many animal experiments. However it was not until the 19th century that a market for animal experimentation was developed
  • . Today, sadly it is big business and in Australia up to 6.5 million animals annually are used in futile and cruel experiments. Most animals are killed during or after experiments
Adya Saigal

'The sickening conspiracy that is the fashion industry' | Mail Online - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...nspiracy-fashion-industry.html

fashion industry conspiracy

shared by Adya Saigal on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • British Fashion Council
  • ban very skinny models from being hired for London Fashion Week next month.
  • "We believe that regulation is neither desirable nor enforceable,"
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • "recommend that only models aged 16 or over are used".
  • equivalent of giving the models crystal meth, ashtrays, syringes and unlimited quantities of champagne.
  • putting big business before the health of all young women in this country.
  • The World Health Organisation considers anyone with a BMI of 18.5 or below to be underweight.
  • The Council of Fashion Designers of America is also backing an education programme to teach young models about healthy eating and nutrition.
Puja DeGamia

Debate: Portrayal of women in mass media - Debatepedia - 0 views

debatepedia.idebate.org/...rtrayal_of_women_in_mass_media

Portrayal of Women in the Media

shared by Puja DeGamia on 12 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • A big part of media audience consists of teenagers, who are particularly vulnerable
  • This is because the mentality of young people is in the process of formation.
  • The impact of media on the morality of the younger generation can affect the future of our society negatively.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Women are portrayed as perfect models. Although very often "Photoshop-edited",
  • hile stressing the importance of being slim. This leads in consequence to "promotion of anorexia", which is clearly undesirable.
  • Many girls idolize models and feel the need to mirror their thinness.
  • Models of a very low weight are setting bad examples to these girls
  • can be held responsible for the increasing number of girls with eating disorders
  • The fashion industry is not to blame for eating disorders. Eating disorders are serious mental illnesses and are not simply triggered by models and images of thin people.
Ben Walters

Part 1 - How video games are good for the brain - The Boston Globe - 0 views

www.boston.com/...o_games_are_good_for_the_brain

Entertainment Brain Learning Education Video Games Society Psychology Aggression Positive

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - Cached
  • How video games are good for the brain Concerns about violent programs persist, but researchers are discovering that playing can boost cognitive function and foster positive behavior
  • In his speech to America’s schoolchildren last month, President Obama had a clear directive about video games: Put them away.
  • But the latest science shows that there’s a lot more to video games than their dark reputations suggest.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • “There’s still a tendency to think of video games as a big wad of time-wasting content,’’
  • “Games are a medium. They’re not inherently good or bad.’’
  • After years of focusing on the bad - and there are still legitimate concerns, for instance, about the psychological effects of certain violent games - scientists are increasingly examining the potential benefits of video games. Their studies are revealing that a wide variety of games can boost mental function, improving everything from vision to memory. Still unclear is whether these gains are long-lasting and can be applied to non-game tasks. But video games, it seems, might actually be good for the brain.
  • The very structure of video games makes them ideal tools for brain training.
  • games have figured out a way to encourage players to persist at solving challenging problems.’’
  • This adaptive challenge is “stunningly powerful’’ for learning, said John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at MIT.
  • Most games involve a huge number of mental tasks, and playing can boost any one of them. Fast-paced, action-packed video games have been shown, in separate studies, to boost visual acuity, spatial perception, and the ability to pick out objects in a scene. Complex, strategy-based games can improve other cognitive skills, including working memory and reasoning.
  • Researchers now know that learning and practicing a challenging task can actually change the brain.
  • Richard Haier,a pediatric neurologist and professor emeritus at the School of Medicine at the University of California at Irvine, has shown in a pair of studies that the classic game Tetris, in which players have to rotate and direct rapidly falling blocks, alters the brain. In a paper published last month, Haier and his colleagues showed that after three months of Tetris practice, teenage girls not only played the game better, their brains became more efficient.
Ben Walters

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

www.msnbc.msn.com/18220228

Entertainment Brain Games Society Psychology Violence Aggression Jack Thompson

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - Cached
  • 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.
  • ...31 more annotations...
  • 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
      Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10
       
      '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. 
    • Ben Walters
      Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10
       
      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.
  • 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
      Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10
       
      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.
  • Microsoft did not create "Counter Strike" but did publish a version of it for the Xbox.
  • 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.
  • "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."
  • 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."
  • 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."
  • 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."
Dominick Wong

The Concorde Aircraft Information - 0 views

www.aircraft-photos.net/Concorde.aspx

shared by Dominick Wong on 21 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • 1975 almost every big city was being visited for Concorde, proving its great reliability. Later, problems came up. The price of fuel went up and Concorde was now very expensive to use. So, its flights were dramatically decreased.
golan elzur

Bunnies Don't Wear Lipstick: Death by Mascara: Why We Torture, I Mean, Test On, Bunnies... - 0 views

bunniesdontwearlipstick.blogspot.com/...ara-why-we-torture-i-mean.html

animals testing cosmetics

shared by golan elzur on 12 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Mrs. Brown was to be honored by her local PTA that very evening. At the beauty parlor hours before the big event, she decided to go ahead and try a cosmetic change -- to permanently darken her brows and eyelashes. Her hairdresser had a new coal tar-based dye called "Lash Lure." Riding home, Mrs. Brown’s eyes started burning. According to Teresa Riordan, author of Inventing Beauty, Mrs. Brown made matters probably worse when she got home by applying various treatments herself, one boric acid, another a topical made by her pharmacist, and then “yellow oxide of mercury.’ At the PTA banquet that evening, Mrs. Brown was so uncomfortable she left early. In the ensuing days, the skin around Mrs. Brown’s eyes ulcered and blistered. Nothing really helped. Of the aftermath, The New Republic would write: “Her eyes are gone and the flesh around them is a mass of tortured scars.”1
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