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Ben Walters

'FarmVille' power user: 'I'm not obsessed' - Technology & science - Games - msnbc.com - 0 views

www.msnbc.msn.com/35825112

Gaming Games Facebook Farmville Applications Obsession Addiction

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Cathy Hinz is really into “FarmVille.” But she swears she’s not obsessed.  “I can, you know, walk away and say, ‘I’m not going to worry about it.’ I don’t worry about it, but I will plan my farm around my life,” she says.
  • she has time to be online, fiddling with the farm simulation game as much as she wants. And she’s far from the only one.
  • Since its launch in June 2009, “FarmVille” has grown like an invasive weed, with 80 million players
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • It’s absurdly easy to get started:
  • It’s no “World of Warcraft,” but for non-gamers like Hinz, that’s exactly the point.
  • They were either too violent or too complicated or too ‘childish,’” she says.
  • She’s online a lot — spending two to three hours a day on “FarmVille,“ but usually not all at one time. Most of her family plays the game, including her eldest daughter (hooked), her three grandkids (hooked) and her husband, a hard-core gamer who reluctantly allowed his wife to rope him into virtual horticulture. Now, she says, he’s really concerned about his crops.
  • Hinz loves “FarmVille” because it’s something she can control.
  • Hinz loves tweaking her virtual plot of land, and her schedule affords her plenty of time to do that.
  • Some of the “FarmVille” updates are free, and some you have to pay for, but Hinz says the cost is negligible. “I would spend more than $10 to see a movie, and I’d get to sit there for two hours and that would be it. Whereas 10 bucks on this, I can get enjoyment out of it every day.”
  • She likes leveling up, and the competitive nature of the game. But Hinz also really likes the interaction on “FarmVille.”
  • “When I started my Facebook account, I had two friends — my daughters. At one point, while playing “FarmVille,” I had over 200 friends on Facebook,” she says.
  • Zynga dangled a Hot Rod Tractor for “FarmVille” players
  • play “Mafia Wars,” another Zynga game, to level 10.
  • At first, Hinz was indignant. “I’m 50 years old, and I’m not going to do something where you ‘ice’ people, or you rob banks or stuff like that, where that’s the objective.” But then she got to thinking. The Hot Rod Tractor can plow nine plots simultaneously. It’s got flames on it. “I figured, what the hell, I’ll just get to level 10 and do it. And now I’m a level 40 in ‘Mafia Wars’ as well,” she laughs. “It’s a lot funner than I thought it would be. It’s something I can do while I’m waiting for things to harvest.”
  • Still, Hinz says she’s got the games under control, and that they’re not controlling her. “If I started putting things off in order to do ‘FarmVille,’ if it becomes a priority over work, or spending time with my family, that would be an addiction.” Is she there yet? “No. I do it because I can.”
Anushka Gandhi

Afghanistan: Five Years After 9/11 - 0 views

www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm

11 years afghanistan five

shared by Anushka Gandhi on 20 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Afghanistan was too weak to prevent the terrorism within its borders.
    • Anushka Gandhi
      Anushka Gandhi on 20 Nov 10
       
      This nation grew weak because of the Soviet invasion and Western
  • “They began to kill Afghans,” Karzai said. “They began to destroy our mosques. They began to close schools. They began to insert war.”
  • Democracy arrived, he said, millions of refugees returned, and the country has embarked on rebuilding.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “For all of us in this world to be safer, we must remove the need for groups, organizations, or state entities [to rely] on religious radicalism as instruments of policy,” he said. “Military action in Afghanistan alone is not going to free us of terrorism. Going to the sources of terrorism, where they get trained, where they get motivated, where they get financed, where they get deployed, is necessary.”
    • Anushka Gandhi
      Anushka Gandhi on 20 Nov 10
       
      "He" - Hamid Karzai President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
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. 
  • 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
      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.
    • 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.
  • 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."
Anjan Narain

Essay on Euthanasia in America - 0 views

www.echeat.com/essay.php

Essay on Euthanasia in the US

shared by Anjan Narain on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Euthanasia is a choice everyone should have, but like all rights, it should not be taken advantage of. By legalizing euthanasia the practice of assisted suicide would be an available choice as well as regulated to see that it does not get abused and used for the wrong reasons.
  • My four primary arguments for legalizing euthanasia are as follows: The mercy argument, which states that the immense pain and indignity of prolonged suffering, cannot be ignored. We are being inhumane to force people to continue suffering this way. The patients right to self-determination.
  • The reality argument. "Let's face it people are already doing it".
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Some terminally ill patients who have been denied assistance in dying, have attempted to terminate they're suffering by ending their lives themselves or with the help of loved ones, who are not trained in medicine. Some patients have botched their suicides and brought further suffering to themselves and those around them. Patients should not have to resort to suicide to end their suffering. It is their life, their pain. They should be able to get the treatment they want.
  • " if we so choose, the end of life need not be preceded by intolerable pain, or by senility and loss of bodily functions.” Death with dignity is the right of every person who faces an incurable, painful or degrading future.
  • Caring for terminally ill patients requires a vast amount of money. In 1997, shortly after the senate voted to overturn the Northern Territory's euthanasia law, doctors from both sides of the euthanasia lobby united in calling for more funds for palliative care. There is a requirement for several hundred million dollars extra to really adequately provide for the needs of the dying, particularly in country areas.
  • Why does the government choose to outlaw euthanasia when it is done anyway? Legalizing it would mean that patients would be able to consult doctors, and not resort to taking it into their own hands, making it safer and better. There would be no need for suicide attempts; consequently there would be less tragedies
  • Passive euthanasia is defined as allowing a patient to die by withholding treatment, while active euthanasia is defined as taking measures that directly cause a patient's death
  • Those who argue against active euthanasia understand that there is a demand for active euthanasia as a response "to the fear of entrapment in a technologically sophisticated, seemingly uncaring world of medicine
  • offers several arguments in favor of the moral permissibility of active euthanasia, one of which is an argument from mercy. He begins by describing a classic case where a person named Jack is terminally ill and in unbearable pain and states that Jack's condition alone is a compelling reason for the permissibility of active mercy killing.
  • active euthanasia is morally permissible since it produces the greatest happiness
  • . The categorical imperative supports active euthanasia since no one would willfully universalize a rule, which condemns people to unbearable pain before death. It is also reasoned that it is considered bad to be the cause of someone's death and that death is regarded as a great evil. However, if it has been decided that active or passive euthanasia is desirable in a given case, it has also been decided that in this instance death is no greater an evil than the patient's continued existence
  • A good point is raised here, because death is supposedly inevitable in either case, so according to Rachel, if a doctor allows a patient to die or gives him a lethal injection, then the motives and ends are essentially the same.
  • In conclusion, denying patients the right to die with dignity and lucidity is unfair and cruel. If physician assisted suicide means giving a patient the right to choose between a life without dignity and hope, or ending their pain and suffering with an honorable closure on life, than it should be permitted.
  • When a patient has no desire to go on living and wants to die before their condition gets worse, they should be allowed to decide how their life ends and why. Assisted suicide is known to have been going on without fanfare and without legal support for many years. It is time to give physician-assisted suicide the legal justification that it deserves.
Ben Walters

Six Wonderful Things About Games - 0 views

radoff.com/...x-wonderful-things-about-games

Gaming Wonderful psychology

shared by Ben Walters on 11 Nov 10 - Cached
  • Research is mounting that playing games can make you smarter.
  • At the 2009 MI6 conference, he pointed out that games engage the same brain machinery that’s used when one is learning.
  • Is it a coincidence that “nerds” often possess an interest in computer games, as well as have an aptitude for subjects like maths and science?
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • A huge number of engineers, designers and artists have taken up their careers because of the excitement they gained from their exposure to games. Games challenge the imagination, and designing them is a fun and rewarding experience.
  • Part of this includes challenging kids to design games
  • This hasn’t been lost on the Obama Administration, which is including educational games in a $260mm program
  • It is often said that playing video games improves one’s hand-eye coordination.  This is a very important skill to have outside the realm of video games
  • playing games could help someone become a better surgeon (it does—a lot).
  • games have gotten people excited about learning something new.
  • eople do learn new things they might never have, just by playing these games.
  • Academic research has shown that games can increase the feelings that lead to creativity
  • laying WoW directly intersects with the study of applied mathematics.
  • ophisticated spreadsheets and statistical models to reach their conclusions
  • their first exposure to formal applied mathematics
  • well-researched tables, proofs and statistics.
  • If only my gradeschool teachers had come up with something this engaging to get me interested in in the almost impenetrable world of mathematics!
  • Furthermore, games themselves are becoming an increasingly creative medium
  • video and computer games
  • an be quite influential in fostering creative expression
  • Games even inspire creativity outside of the game
  • games as creative catalysts
  • we’re still at the very beginning of games as a means of artistic and creative expression
  • games provide a venue for expression
  • Furthermore, the study found that teens who are exposed to civics within games (e.g., city-simulators like SimCity, or running a guild/clan in other games) are more likely than other teens to be interested in political and civics activities.
  • players are learning real economics and business skills
  • Such claims have been repeatedly debunked after extensive research,
  • Unlike any other medium, games gets different people from different countries, political views and religions all playing together. Not because they are elite; not because they’re spectators, but because you must work together to solve problems.
  • I’m convinced that the more we play together, the more we’ll learn to live with each other
  • Games are fun, and that’s enough for me. Maybe it isn’t enough for you—or for your friends or for your family. I hope you the information I’ve presented is helpful to you in explaining many of the other positives about games.  Not only are games fun, but they’re also healthy, and can promote positive brain development, career opportunity and social behavior.
Bhavya Puri

Shark fin soup alters an ecosystem - Page 3 - CNN - 0 views

articles.cnn.com/...3

soup ecosystem sharks humane shark

shared by Bhavya Puri on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Located 300 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, the only way to get to this uninhabited islet in the eastern Pacific is by boat. Cocos Island, recently declared a national park, is a nearly pristine and richly preserved ecosystem where thousands of sharks have roamed for centuries. Scientists think there are more sharks there than any other place on Earth
  • "Can you imagine if it was Yellowstone Park and people were shooting up grizzlies? No one would ever get away with it. But this ocean, because it's out of sight, out of mind, [shark finning] carries on," said Knights.
Dominick Wong

Concorde May Fly Again | Autopia | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...concorde-may-fly-again

shared by Dominick Wong on 14 Nov 10 - Cached
  • the effort to get a Concorde flying again is a joint effort between two organizations, one from Britain and one from France.
  • Concorde burned roughly six
  • times as much fuel as a modern airliner and was a whole lot noisier than any other commercial aircraft.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • But with a cruise speed of 1,300 miles per hour, it did get your from point A to point B about twice as fast as a 747.
Ben Walters

Stress over teen's 'addiction' | Perth Now - 0 views

www.perthnow.com.au/...story-e6frg13u-1111113958526

Stress Games Addiction Teens Entertainment Psychology Runescape

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • THE father of a 15-year-old Perth computer-game addict has described the family's extraordinary nightmare - comparing it to heroin addiction.
  • his son's life had spiralled out of control in the past 14 months.
  • The Year 11 Ballajura Community College student has not attended classes for two months. He spends his time alone in a dark room playing the RuneScape game for up to 16 hours a day.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The son used to dress in his school uniform each morning, but after his mother left for work he would change out of the uniform and spend the day playing the interactive game.
  • She would return home each night none the wiser.
  • The family is struggling to find help for him, and a succession of psychologists and counsellors have not yet made any progress with him.
  • The boy's parents are divorced, and he lives with his mother. His sister moved out because she couldn't cope with his bizarre addiction.
  • His son had been transformed from a typically bright, sports-mad teenager to being reclusive and aggressive.
  • "It just got worse and worse,'' he said. ``He just wouldn't come off it at night. He'd play until two or three o'clock in the morning.
  • "If his mother tried to shut it off or whatever, he'd become violent.
  • "He displayed the characteristics of a heroin addict. You haven't got someone putting a needle in their arm and having a high, but you've got all the telltale collateral damage of a heroin addict _ withdrawal from his family, withdrawal from his friends, lies to cover his addiction. He'll do anything.
  • "He was an outdoor kid. Every sport you could name, he was playing. Now he's white, doesn't go outside. He was very bright, he was going to be a forensic scientist.
  • "Recently he has admitted it, before he was in denial. He wants to get back to what he was like. He wants to get better. He wants to go to school. He can't -- it won't let him. It's like any addiction.''
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”.
Dominick Wong

Experts to examine Concorde engines - World, Breaking News - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk - 0 views

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/...concorde-engines-14825337.html

shared by Dominick Wong on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Experts will examine the engines on a French Concorde in the £15 million move towards getting the supersonic passenger jet back in the air.
  • will take place at the Le Bourget Air and Space Museum near Paris in a partnership between the British Save Concorde Group, SCG, and a French group
Yasmin Tandon

Rethinking American Foreign Aid - US Foreign Aid - 0 views

usforeignpolicy.about.com/...helpcomm.htm

Foreign Aid America economy

shared by Yasmin Tandon on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
    • Yasmin Tandon
      Yasmin Tandon on 11 Nov 10
       
      Blue- Background Yellow- Yes Green- No Pink- Need to read further to get more detail
  • zSB(3,3)Sponsored Links World Affairs DailyGlobal Headline News & Commentary from International Media Sourceswww.worldaffairsjournal.org Winter Programme on UNGeneva Winter Programme on the UN and International Developmentgraduateinstitute.ch/winter The Progressive Realista metablog about American foreign policywww.progressiverealist.org zob();if(zsForeign Policy Ads Budget Foreign Aid Foreign Policy Congress Federal Budget US Government Budget zSB(3,2);if(zsSponsored Links Life Experience DegreesNo attendance - No coursework Accelerated - Worldwide Shipmentwww.universityofdublin.org 16th Int'l Education Expo660 Exhibitors from 25 Countries Why not Check Now & Meet Yours?www.cieet.com January 10, 2008 America's foreign aid programs are controversial
  • Polls indicate most Americans want the United States to be a generous donor of foreign aid.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Explore US Foreign Policy
  • overestimate how much help we send overseas.
  • Others are concerned that our foreign aid falls far short of the global commitments made in the Millennium Development Goals.
  • And yet others say Western foreign assistance is focused more on "giving a man a fish" than on "teaching a man to fish."
  • The full report (215 pages, PDF) is available here.
  • The State Department budget plus all the foreign aid totals less than $40 billion (which is less than 1.5% of the federal budget). But Defense Department spending for this year, plus maintenance of America's nuclear arsenal, plus the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
Vikram Mohan

New York City mosque debate will shape American Islam » World/National News »... - 0 views

www.eagletribune.com/...bate-will-shape-American-Islam

debate

shared by Vikram Mohan on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • "The joke is on moderate Muslims," said Muqtedar Khan, a University of Delaware political scientist and author of "American Muslims, Bridging Faith and Freedom." "What's the point if you're going to be treated the same way as a radical? If I get into trouble are they going to treat me like I'm a supporter of al-Qaeda?"
Ari Kewalramani

Abortion, Infanticide Foeticide India - 1 views

www.indianchild.com/nfanticide_foeticide_india.htm

Abortion India Son Preference

shared by Ari Kewalramani on 11 Nov 10 - Cached
  • According to a recent report
    • Ari Kewalramani
      Ari Kewalramani on 15 Nov 10
       
      50 million females have been omitted from the population in India because of discrimination against women.
  • (UNICEF)
  • up to 50 million girls and women are missing from India' s population as a result of systematic gender discrimination in India.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • most countries
  • 105 female births for every 100 males.
  • less than 93 women for every 100 men
  • Much of the discrimination is to do with cultural beliefs and social norms
  • norms
  • be challenged if this practice is to stop.
  • ultrasound scanners
  • advertise
  • spend 600 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later.
  • avoiding a girl,
  • ing a large dowry on the marriage of her daughte
  • a family will avoid pay
  • According to UNICEF
  • the problem is getting worse
  • scientific methods of detecting the sex of a baby and of performing abortions are improving.
  • increasing available in rural areas of India
  • fuelling fears
  • abortion of female foetuses is on the increase
Yasmin Tandon

United States of America: Foreign Aid - 0 views

www.vexen.co.uk/...foreign_aid.html

Foreign Aid America economy

shared by Yasmin Tandon on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • When the going gets tough, Americans keep giving
  • early $241 billi
  • 2002 set a new high
  • ...26 more annotations...
  • over 2001's total in current dollars
  • $240.92 billion in gifts equaled 2.3 percent of US gross domestic product.
  • amount represents a 0.5 percent decline since 2001
  • "the resilience and pervasiveness of giving in our culture,
  • Most donations come from individuals (76 percent of the total), and some nonprofit sectors were hit harder last year than others
  • The USA is only the world's biggest giver because it is rich.
  • most stingy and self-interested giver in the developed world:
  • USA is the
  • America is the world's most generous nation.
  • one of the most conventional pieces of 'knowledgeable ignorance
  • between
  • $6 and $15 billion in foreign aid in the period between 1995 and 1999
  • Japan gives more than the US,
  • between $9 and $15 billion in the same period
  • absolute figures are less significant than the proportion of gross domestic product (GDP, or national wealth) that a country devotes to foreign aid
  • US ranks twenty-second of the 22 most developed nations.
  • President Jimmy Carter
  • We are the stingiest nation of all'
  • Denmark is top of the table, giving 1.01% of GDP, while the US manages just 0.1%
  • long established the target of 0.7% GDP for development assistance
  • Denmark, 1.01%; Norway, 0.91%; the Netherlands, 0.79%; Sweden, 0.7%
  • US is highly selective in who receives its aid
  • 50% of its aid budget is spent on middle-income countries in the Middle East, with Israel being the recipient of the largest single share.
  • 80% of that aid itself actually goes to American companies in those foreign countries.
  • 3. Conclusion
  • The rest of the world
Simran Fabiani

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

www.something-fishy.org/...themedia.php

media tv magazines

shared by Simran Fabiani on 11 Nov 10 - Cached
  • 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
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • 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.
Puja DeGamia

EBSCOhost: Anorexics younger - Eating disorders in children under 13 have quadrupled - 0 views

web.ebscohost.com/...detail

young children affected by anorexia

shared by Puja DeGamia on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • QUEENSLAND primary schools are enlisting body image experts to help students with suspected anorexia as the average age of eating disorder victims continues to get younger.
  • The number of children aged 13 years and under diagnosed with an eating disorder by community mental health services in Queensland has more than quadrupled over the past five years.
  • Experts say nearly one-third of all child and youth mental health beds in the state's public hospitals are now taken up by anorexia nervosa patients.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • `I have certainly seen plenty of 11 and 12-year-olds kids in grade 6 and 7 with an eating disorder
Mihikaa Naik

Spatial intelligence and the 'Mozart effect': Does listening to Mozart make you smarter? - 0 views

www.highiqpro.com/...ing-to-mozart-make-you-smarter

mozart effect true false intellegence

shared by Mihikaa Naik on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • widely believed to be an established fact
  • ntelligent – it is intricate, skillful, precise and sophisticated
  • rain activity becoming
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • coordinated or synchronized
  • Francis Rauscher and her colleagues published a stud
  • visualise folding and cutting a piece of paper
  • Mozart effect’ (as the Press called it
  • quickly captivated the public imagination
  • many examples of single scientific studies that initially catch he public imagination and get a lot of press coverage, but are subsequently proved to be invalid or relatively insignificant.
  • effect of Mozart on cognitive performance has been found
  • specific type of spatial task
  • no way can be considered to be a test of general intelligence
  • Nature in 1993
  • . Listening to Mozart has been shown to have no effect on working memory performance
  • therefore misleading to understand the Mozart effect
  • The effect is likely to be due to arousal or mood, not changes in cognition
  • Differences
  • in mood have been shown to have an effect on performance
  • positive mood
  • esearch provide no evidence that the improvement differ
  • other engaging stimuli that are equally pleasing to participants
  • authors’ views on their own study
  • over-reaction in the popular press
  • jumping to conclusions
Ari Kewalramani

Gendercide Watch: Female Infanticide - 0 views

www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html

Case Study Female Infanticide India

shared by Ari Kewalramani on 15 Nov 10 - Cached
  • female infanticide reflects the low status accorded to women in most parts of the world
  • murdering girls is still sometimes believed to be a wiser course than raising them
  • that "Sons are called upon to provide the income; they are the ones who do most of the work in the fields.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • igh value given to males decreases the value given to females."
  • dowry and wedding
  • to more than a million rupees
  • average civil servant earns about 100,000 rupees
  • In many cases, of course, the women are not independent agents but merely victims of a dominant family ideology based on preference for male children."
  • 3,500 abortions of female fetuses annually
  • Rajasthan,
  • UNICEF
  • Bombay in 1984 on abortions after prenatal sex determination stated that 7,999 out of 8,000 of the aborted fetuses were females.
  • Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh [states], it is usual for girls and women to eat less than men and boys and to have their meal after the men and boys had finished eating.
  • it is usually boys who have preference in health care
  • clothing
  • morbidity.
  • Indian state governments have sometimes taken measures to diminish the slaughter of infant girls and abortions of female fetuses.
  • f one parent undergoes sterilization, the government will give the family [U.S.] \\$160 in aid per child.
  • tate with one or two daughters and no sons
  • The money will be paid in instalments as the girl goes through school. She will also get a small gold ring and on her 20th birthday, a lump sum of $650 to serve as her dowry or defray the expenses of higher education. Four thousand families enrolled in the first year," with 6,000 to 8,000 expected to join annually (as of 1994
  • suffer
Ari Kewalramani

Missing women of Asia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Missing_women_of_Asia

Missing Women Asia

shared by Ari Kewalramani on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • in the form of selective abortion and perhaps even infanticide and female infant neglect - that is the cause of the skewed gender ratio.[6]
  • If the first child was male, then the sex of the subsequent children tended to follow the regular, biologically determined sex pattern
  • However, if the first child was female, the subsequent children had a much higher probability of being male, indicating that conscious parental choice was involved in determining the sex of the child.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • preference for boys and the resulting shortage of girls was even more pronounced in the more highly developed Haryana and Punjab regions of India than in poorer areas,
  • high prevalence of this prejudice among the more educated and affluent women (mothers) there.
  • Only recently and in some countries (particularly South Korea) have the development and educational campaigns begun to turn the tide, resulting in more normal gender ratios.[9]
  • Punjab
  • 1980s, girls were not receiving inferior treatment if a girl was born as a first child in a given family, when the parents still had high hopes for obtaining a son later. Subsequent births of girls were however unwelcome, because each such birth diminished a chance of the family having a son.
  • educated women would have fewer offspring, and therefore were under more acute pressure to produce a son as early as possible
  • affluent families opt for an abortion
  • r if a girl is born
  • decrease her chance of survival
  • One reason for parents, even mothers, to avoid daughters
  • As parents grow
  • expect much more help and support from their independent sons, than from daughters, who after getting married become in a sense property of their husbands' families
  • Women are also often practically unable to inherit real estate, so a mother-widow will lose her family's (in reality her late husband's) plot of land and become indigent if she had had only daughters.
  • Poor rural families have meager resources to distribute among their children, which reduces the opportunity to discriminate against girls.[9]
  • South Korea has led to a sweeping change in social attitudes and reduced the preference for sons
  • rapid economic development, combined with policies that seek to promote gender equality
  • sex ratio transition
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