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Ben Walters

When Escape Seems Just a Mouse-Click Away - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2006052601960.html

Korea Stress Addiction Games Entertainment Psychology Teens School Pressure

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - Cached
  • "I guess I knew I was becoming addicted, but I couldn't stop myself," Kim recalled from a clinic where he was undergoing counseling. "I stopped changing my clothes. I didn't go out. And I began to see myself as the character in my games."
  • Last month, the government -- which opened a treatment center in 2002 -- launched a game addiction hotline. Hundreds of private hospitals and psychiatric clinics have opened units to treat the problem.
  • An estimated 2.4 percent of the population from 9 to 39 are believed to be suffering from game addiction, according to a government-funded survey. Another 10.2 percent were found to be "borderline cases" at risk of addiction -- defined as an obsession with playing electronic games to the point of sleep deprivation, disruption of daily life and a loosening grip on reality. Such feelings are typically coupled with depression and a sense of withdrawal when not playing, counselors say.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The situation has grown so acute that 10 South Koreans -- mostly teenagers and people in their twenties -- died in 2005 from game addiction-related causes, up from only two known deaths from 2001 to 2004, according to government officials. Most of the deaths were attributed to a disruption in blood circulation caused by sitting in a single, cramped position for too long -- a problem known as "economy class syndrome," a reference to sitting in an airplane's smallest seats on long flights.
  • In one instance, a 28-year-old man died in the central city of Taegu last year after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks. He finally collapsed in a "PC baang " -- one of the tens of thousands of Internet game cafes that have become as common as convenience stores across South Korea. Users can pop in to these small, smoky dens -- with walls covered in gothic game posters -- for about $1 an hour, day or night.
  • "Game addiction has become one of our newest societal ills," said Son Yeongi, president of the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity, which offers government-funded counseling. "Gaming itself is not the problem. Like anything, this is about excessive use."
  • Experts are seeing more cases of game addiction in many industrialized nations -- particularly the United States and Japan. But sociologists and psychiatrists have identified South Korea as the epicenter of the problem.
  • That is in part because young people here suffer from acute stress as they face educational pressures said to far exceed those endured by their peers in other countries. It is not uncommon, for instance, for South Korean students to be forced by their parents into four to five hours of daily after-school tutoring. With drug abuse and teenage sex considered rare in the socially conservative country, escape through electronic games can be a hugely attractive outlet.
  • At the same time, South Korea boasts an unparalleled gaming culture. In 2000 in Seoul, the capital, South Koreans inaugurated the World Cyber Games -- a sort of gaming Olympics that now draws players from 67 nations. Professional South Korean gamers can earn more than $100,000 a year in domestic and international competitions.
Dominick Wong

Concorde Aircraft Facts, Dates and History - 0 views

www.flightlevel350.com/Concorde_aircraft_facts.html

shared by Dominick Wong on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • delta wing configuration and an evolution of the afterburner equipped engines originally developed for the Avro Vulcan strategic bomber. It is the first civil airliner to be equipped with an analogue fly-by-wire flight control system.
    • Dominick Wong
      Dominick Wong on 14 Nov 10
       
      Pros &Cons
  • For speed optimization: double-delta (ogive) shaped wings afterburning Roll-Royce/Snecma Olympus turbojets with supercruise capability thrust-by-wire engines, ancestor of today's FADEC controlled engines droop-nose section for good landing visibility
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • Mach 2.04 'sweet spot' for optimum fuel consumption (supersonic drag minimum, while jet engines are more efficient at high speed) mostly aluminium construction for low weight and relatively conventional build full-regime autopilot and autothrottle allowing "hands off" control of the aircraft from climb out to landing fully electrically-controlled, analog fly-by-wire flight controls systems multifunction flight control surfaces high-pressure hydraulic system of 28 MPa (4,000 lbf/in) for lighter hydraulic systems components fully electrically controlled analog brake-by-wire system pitch trim by shifting fuel around the fuselage for center-of-gravity control parts milled from single alloy billet reducing the part number count.
  • unique experience of passing through the sound barrier was less dramatic than would be expected. The moment would be announced by one of the pilots, and could be seen on the cabin display, otherwise the slight surge in acceleration could easily be missed. At twice the normal cruising altitude, turbulence was rare and the view from t he windows clearly showed the curvature of the Earth. During the supersonic cruise, although the outside air temperature was typically -60 C, air friction would heat the external skin at the front of the plane to around +120 C making the windows warm to the touch and producing a noticeable temperature gradient along the length of the cabin. Most remarkably Concorde was the only passenger airliner able to overtake the terminator. On certain early evening transatlantic flights departing from Heathrow or Paris, it was possible to take off at night and catch up with the sun from the cockpit you could see the sun rise in the west.
  • aris crash The Concorde was the safest airliner in the world according to passenger deaths per distance travelled until the 25 July 2000 crash of Air France Flight 4590 in Gonesse, France, although it should be noted that the Boeing 737 fleet acquires more passenger miles and service hours in one week than the Concorde fleet acquired in the course of its entire service career. In any case, all of the people on board the flight perished, as well as four people on the ground. As the plane was on its take-off run, a metal piece punctured the tires which then burst, puncturing the fuel tanks and leading to the loss of the aircraft. The report of the investigation was published on 14 December 2004, attributing the crash to foreign object damage from a titanium strip that fell from another aircraft, a Continental Airlines DC-10 which had taken off four minutes before; the piece had not been approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration.
  • Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde supersonic transport (SST)
  • commercial servic
  • cruise speed of mach 2.04 and a cruise altitude of 60,000 feet
  • In the late 1950s the
  • British, Fr
  • ench, American
  • Soviets
  • developing a supersonic transport
  • ere lar
  • espective governments as a way of gaining some foothold in the aircraft market that was
  • designs called the Type 233 and Super-Caravelle
  • dominated by the United States.
  • prototype construction in the early 1960s, but the cost was so great that the companies (and governments) decided to join forces
  • egotiated as an international treaty between Britain and France
  • draft treaty was signed on November 28, 1962.
  • both companies had been merged into new ones and the Concorde project was thus a part of the British Aircraft Corporation and Aerospatiale.
  • Only 20 Concordes were built, six for development and 14 for commercial service. These were: two prototypes two pre-production aircraft 16 production aircraft
  • Critically, many of the victims of the 9/11 attacks were business executives based within the World Trade Center buildings who were either regular Concorde customers themselves, or authorised others to travel on the aircraft.
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
Bhavya Puri

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

articles.cnn.com/...2

ecosystem soup fin shark finning

shared by Bhavya Puri on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • 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.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • 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
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."
Yasmin Tandon

Foreign Aid for Development Assistance - Global Issues - 0 views

www.globalissues.org/...ign-aid-development-assistance

Foreign Aid America economy

shared by Yasmin Tandon on 11 Nov 10 - Cached
  • both the quantity and quality of aid have been poor and donor nations have not been held to account.
  • 1970,
  • world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international development aid, annually
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countriesMost aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the mostAid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their productsLarge projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable; money can often be embezzled away.
  • This web page has the following sub-sections:
  • “Trade, not aid”
  • excuse for rich countries to cut back aid that has been agreed and promised at the United Nations.
  • This target was codified in a United Nations General Assembly Resolution, and a key paragraph says:
  • The donor governments promised to spend 0.7% of GNP on ODA (Official Development Assistance) at the UN General Assembly in 1970—some 40 years ago
  • developed countries will rapidly and progressively take what measures they can … to reduce the extent of tying of assistance and to mitigate any harmful effects
  • make loans tied
  • Developed countries will provide, to the greatest extent possible, an increased flow of aid on a long-term and continuing basis.
  • almost all rich nations have constantly failed to reach their agreed obligations of the 0.7% target. Instead of 0.7%, the amount of aid has been around 0.2 to 0.4%, some $100 billion short.
  • the quality of the aid has been poor.
  • USA’s aid, in terms of percentage of their GNP has almost always been lower than any other industrialized nation in the world, though paradoxically since 2000, their dollar amount has been the highest.Between 1992 and 2000, Japan had been the largest donor of aid, in terms of raw dollars. From 2001 the United States claimed that position, a year that also saw Japan’s amount of aid drop by nearly 4 billion dollars.
  • Aid beginning to increase but still way below obligations
  • In 2009, the OCED and many others feared official aid would decline due to the global financial crisis. They urged donor nations to make aid “countercyclical”; not to reduce it when it is needed most, but those who didn’t cause the crisis.
  • And indeed, for 2009, aid did increase as official stats from the OECD shows. It rose 0.7% from just under $123 bn in 2008 to just over $123 bn in 2009 (at constant 2008 prices).
Ben Walters

Video-game sales overtaking music - MSN Money - 0 views

articles.moneycentral.msn.com/...oGameSalesOvertakingMusic.aspx

Economy Games Money Sales Music Growth

shared by Ben Walters on 15 Nov 10 - Cached
  • 6/26/2007
  • video-game sector will remain one of the above-average growth segments of the global entertainment industries through 2011, with global games spending set to exceed music spending this year
  • Key growth engines will include online and wireless games, new-generation consoles and the burgeoning in-game advertising business.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • 2011, the worldwide gaming market will be worth $48.9 billion at a compound annual growth rate of 9.1%
  • ith gains slowing every year because of the maturation of the current generation of consoles,
  • exceed the 6.4% advance that PwC foresees for the overall entertainment economy during the period.
  • Its data include consumer spending on games, but exclude spending on hardware and accessories.
  • For the U.S. gaming business, PwC projects 6.7% compound annual gains for the five-year period, to $12.5 billion. Asia-Pacific should remain the region with the highest overall spending on gaming during the period and reach $18.8 billion in 2011, PwC forecasts.
  • Despite its leading size, its 10% average annual gains will only be exceeded by the combined region of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), which is pegged for a 10.2% compound annual gain and is set to remain at No. 2 in terms of worldwide gaming.
  • In the U.S., online and wireless games should see the biggest gains through 2011
  • online will expand from an estimated $1.1 billion market last year to $2.7 billion in 2011
  • Consumer spending on console and hand-held games will go from $6.5 billion in 2006 to $7.9 billion in 2011
  • However, the U.S. PC games market will continue its decline, with PwC eyeing a contraction from an estimated $969 million in 2006 to $840 million in 2011.
  • growing from an estimated $80 million last year to $950 million in 2011
  • this estimate could prove conservative as "advertisers like to reach the younger males" that many games tend to attract.
  • He also said that the overall gaming audience continues to expand and become somewhat more female and older than in the past thanks to casual games and the arrival as games as an "important part of culture."
Simran Fabiani

Anorexia: A Media-Borne Illness - BusinessWeek - 0 views

www.businessweek.com/...xia_a_media-borne_illness.html

anorexia media borne ilness

shared by Simran Fabiani on 18 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • he top shows watched by female college students: Gossip Girl, Project Runway, and America’s Next Top Model. Likewise for magazines: Vogue, Seventeen, and Allure.
  • The media I’ve listed contribute to shaping what society considers beauty. The common denominators are tall, desperately skinny women who look fabulous. It should come as no surprise the media is to blame for today’s artificial standard of beauty.
  • The constant bombardment of skinny models and diet plans will certainly have an effect on women whose bodies are just not meant to be that small.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Low self-esteem and eating disorders are the side effects from the media’s portrayal of artificial beauty
  • as of 2004, 8 million people—7 million of them women—had an eating disorder (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, etc.).
  • According to the American Psychiatric Assn.’s Diagnostic & Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, people who suffer from anorexia typically have an underlying personality disorder and seek more control over their environment.
  • indicate that discipline and control, rather than thinness, were their true goals
  • 66% of Americans do not even come close to conforming to that supposed ideal. Meanwhile, less than 3% of the U.S. population suffers from an eating disorder
  • We know Barbie is anatomically impossible.
  • magazine covers featuring celebrities have been airbrushed,
  • blaming the media for eating disorders is a lot like laying the blame for underage smoking on TV characters
  • "over three-quarters of the female characters in TV situation comedies are underweight, and only one in 20 are above average in size.
  • Heavier actresses tend to receive negative comments from male characters about their bodies
  • 80% of these negative comments are followed by canned audience laughter."
Aditi Buti

About Jihad - Islam Jihad and Terrorism - 0 views

www.aboutjihad.com/...islam_jihad_terrorism.php

shared by Aditi Buti on 16 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Suicide under any pretext is not condoned as Jihad in Islam.
  • Respond to the call for Jihad with money, effort, wisdom and life; yet, never fight a Muslim brother, a Muslim country, or a non-Muslim society that respects its treaties and harbors no aggressive designs against Islam or Muslims.
  • Jihad against evil, injustice and oppression within one's self, family and society - Social Jihad.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Jihad against all that prevents Muslims from servitude to God (Allah), people from knowing Islam, defense of a Muslim society (country), retribution against tyranny, and/or when a Muslim is removed from their homeland by force - Physical Jihad or an armed struggle.
  • Jihad must be performed according to Islamic rules and regulations and only for the sake or in the service of Allah. The physical or military Jihad must be called by a Muslim authority, such as, a president or head of a Muslim country after due consultations with the learned leadership.
Shaakya Vembar

You Say Potato, I Say Cassava: Language, Culture and Perception: Scientific American Podcast - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/...episode.cfm

shared by Shaakya Vembar on 15 Nov 10 - Cached
  • "Do you think its just a coincidence that the same culture that uses this kind of indeterminate word is the culture that came up with the uncertainty principle
  • we are obsessed with time, we talk about time all the time and in fact time is the number one noun in terms of usage according to the Oxford [English] Dictionary.
  • So we are talking about time all the time, but if you actually ask someone to define what time is, [they] really can't do it.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • So how do we talk about time? We talk about it metaphorically, and for the most part and this not just in English, but across the world in many different languages.
  • So the metaphors we have like time being a landscape that we are moving across; so we talk about "coming up to Thanksgiving," as though Thanksgiving is a location that we are moving towards, but we also sometimes talk about time as something that's moving while we are static.
  • Kuuk Thaayorre, the language of Pormpuraaw, is that time moves for them from east to west, so they don't talk about it as moving from east to west, but in terms of nonlinguistic cognition—we've tested this in various ways—they seem to depict it as moving from east to west
Anjan Narain

Doctor-Assisted Suicide - 0 views

www.2facts.com/icof_story.aspx

Database- Library- Doctor-Assisted Suicide

shared by Anjan Narain on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Euthanasia
  • To be acceptable to most Americans, any legislation drafted to legalize doctor-assisted suicide will clearly need to balance the desire to end suffering with the need to protect especially vulnerable patients. Timothy Quill puts forward two conditions for the future of this debate. If we legalize euthanasia, he says, we must ensure that absolutely every treatment and pain-management alternative has been tried before we allow a doctor to assist a patient to die.
  • if assisted suicide remains illegal, we must give doctors some kind of guidance in dealing with this morally and emotionally wrenching issue that presently rests entirely on their shoulders.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Many who oppose the legalization of doctor-assisted suicide acknowledge that the practice goes on every day--and feel that society should tolerate it, but not legalize it
  • Judge Guido Calabresi reasoned, "It may well be that a society may prefer subterfuge and covert practice to trying to draw lines that are extraordinarily difficult to draw." A similar view against legalization was expressed in a Detroit News editorial (May 18, 1995): "Sometimes families and doctors will quietly try to frustrate a ban, but society must err on the side of life by officially declaring the practice off-limits."
  • they must either openly break the law, or explicitly hide what they are doing, neither of which are comfortable options.
  • Hogan argued, "With state sanctioned and physician-assisted death at issue, some 'good results' cannot outweigh other lives lost due to unconstitutional errors and abuses."
  • The Oregon act would have been first in the U.S. to allow doctors to assist patients in dying. The law would have let doctors prescribe (but not administer) a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients who had formally requested to die.
  • The law required that the patient request to die three times, the last time in writing, and that doctors wait 15 days after receiving the final request to prescribe the lethal dose. A minimum of two physicians would have had to determine that the patient had six months or less to live.
  • patients' involvement in treatment decisions has been increased debate over doctor-assisted suicide, in which patients seek help in dying from their physician.
  • A November 1993 Louis Harris Associates poll found that a majority of Americans (58%) approve of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a controversial retired Michigan pathologist who has made a mission of assisting terminally ill people to die
  • The issue of doctor-assisted suicide has touched off highly publicized dialogue on how to care for the terminally ill, and specifically, how to manage pain.
  • Euthanasia is defined as "the bringing about of a gentle and easy death for a person suffering from a painful incurable disease," while suicide is "the intentional killing of oneself.
  • active euthanasia, which is at the center of the current controversy. Passive euthanasia is defined as "allowing to die," and is used to describe a decision to withhold treatment, or remove life support, from a patient who may be in a coma or vegetative state.
  • Anjan Narain on 15 Nov 10
     
    "Euthanasia"
Ingrid Sande

Underage Drinking Research Initiative - 0 views

www.niaaa.nih.gov/...underage.htm

shared by Ingrid Sande on 15 Nov 10 - Cached
  • Each year, approximately 5,000 young people under the age of 21 die as a result of underage drinking; this includes about 1,900 deaths from motor vehicle crashes, 1,600 as a result of homicides, 300 from suicide, as well as hundreds from other injuries such as falls, burns, and drownings
  •   Drinkin
  • g continues to be widespread among adolescents, as shown by nationwide surveys as well as studies in smaller population
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • When youth drink they tend to drink intensively, often consuming four to five drinks at one time. MTF data show that 11 percent of 8th graders, 22 percent of 10th graders, and 29 percent of 12th graders had engaged in heavy episodic, or binge, drinking within the past two weeks.
Ben Walters

Jail for couple whose baby died while they raised online child - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...south.korea.virtual.baby

Addiction Death Gaming Child Obsession Couple Games Jail Malnutrition

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Jail for couple whose baby died while they raised online child
  • Seoul, South Korea
  • sought a five-year sentence for negligent homicide, but the court handed out a two-year sentence.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • A couple whose baby starved to death while they raised a virtual child in an online fantasy game
  • "This is the first legal case regarding Internet addiction in Korea,"
  • Three-month-old Kim Sa-rang died of malnutrition in September while her parents were engaged in 12-hour sessions of Prius Online. In the 3-D fantasy game, players nurture an online girl who gains magical powers as she grows.
  • During their trial, the court heard that the toddler weighed 6.4 pounds (2.9 kgs) when she was born, but was only 5.5 pounds (2.5 kgs) at the time of her death.
  • Internet gaming is hugely popular in South Korea, with some 21,500 'PC Bangs' -- or Internet cafes -- offering ultra-high speed Internet connections nationwide.
  • The case has highlighted the dark side of the nation's Internet, an industry touted by South Korean officials as cutting edge. A public debate is under way in the nation over online privacy and regulating Internet rumors.
  • There is particular concern about gaming addiction and its effects on teenagers and those estranged from mainstream society.
  • "Consequently, it comes as no surprise to me that two people who were disconnected from society in general found a common psychological space that kept them physically and socially divorced from reality,"
  • Suwon, the satellite town south of Seoul where the tragedy occurred, was named "Intelligent City of the Year" this month by a New York-based think-tank Intelligent Community Forum.
  • The honor was awarded because of the town's investment in broadband infrastructure and its push to increase connection speeds to 1 gigabyte per second, according to reports.
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

The gaming-violence connection: why society finds it comforting - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...8959.ars

Entertainment Gaming Games America Society Youth Violence Psychology

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • the attempts to legislate restrictions on violent video games and the ambiguous science that supports those efforts.
  • why these legislative efforts gain so much traction despite their lack of a solid scientific foundation.
  • in the journal Contexts, USC sociology lecturer Karen Sternheimer analyzes these efforts in terms of ongoing societal fears regarding the influence of media on children.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • despite the proliferation of violent, first-person shooters in the wake of Doom, juvenile homicide rates have fallen in the decade since its release. Random school shootings remain incredibly rare; for all forms of homicide, students face a seven in 10 million chance of being a victim.
  • Random school shootings remain so rare, in fact, that Sternheimer reports that the FBI found it impossible to generate a profile of a "typical" shooter.
  • society doesn't really understand its youth. As a result, adults fear their loss of control over the factors that influence childhood development in an increasingly connected world.
  • Far from being a new danger, the Sternheimer report suggests that gaming is simply the latest in a long series of media influences to take the blame. "Over the past century, politicians have complained that cars, radio, movies, rock music, and even comic books caused youth immorality and crime, calling for control and sometimes censorship." She terms the targets of such efforts "folk devils," items branded dangerous and immoral that serve to focus blame and fear.
  • These folk devils can be used for political advancement or financial gain via lawsuits such as those that have targeted game makers. But, based on Sternheimer's description, their primary function appears to be to distract people from identifying the real causes underlying our discomfort with youth culture. It also may distract people from getting to know their kids.
Dillon Patel

How Do Humans Cause Global Warming? - Planetsave.com: climate change and environmental news - 0 views

planetsave.com/...ow-humans-cause-global-warming

humans global warming main cause

shared by Dillon Patel on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • main cause of global warming.
  • our species create huge problems that are beyond the ability of other animals to create
  • Humans cause global warming
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • our unique ability to capture and use energy from stored energy sources.
  • Even your basic needs are dependent on fossil fuels.
  • if humans didn’t have the ability to exploit dense energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas.
  • their discovery transformed the face of the earth and the nature of humans.
  • the human population has grown by more than five times
  • person uses more energy than ever.
  • This energy comes largely from fossil fuels, the use of which is a direct cause of global warming.
  • we want to decrease global warming, then the amount of carbon released each year by humans must be drastically reduced.
  • the we
  • althy (that means you!) Increasing population among the poor
  • Americans consume 300 – 600 times as much as people in very poor nations, in some cases.
  • many of whom aspire to live “better” lives, to consume like wealthy people.
  • From this it becomes clear why humans are the main cause of global warming.
  • Dillon Patel on 14 Nov 10
     
    The main cause of global warming, the human species, us.
Aditi Buti

Terrorist Kiddies Brainwashing | Newsflavor - 0 views

newsflavor.com/...terrorist-kiddies-brainwashing

shared by Aditi Buti on 18 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Even easier for Taliban, they kidnap many children from the places they raid and recruit them, willing or not
  • How do they develop this mentality? It is a very common war tactic, which is basically premature brainwashing.
  • children can easily be persuaded and once they are past the point of being naive there is no saving them. 
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • he children who were kidnapped, they’re basically brainwashed in what they are told is “school”, but is really a training camp for future Taliban terrorists.
  • Some of these kids weren’t even captured, their parents sent them off with a Taliban representative who misleads the masses promising a place of education and stability, but they were really manipulating the masses and taking their children off to die,
  • . To the average person it just looks like a luscious landscape, with a lot of forest. To children from a desert that offers little to no creativity to thought, it looks almost like heaven. They want to be t
  • advantage
  • but to a child from this 3rd world country and terrain, it seems like something they can’t live without, which is why they are convinced to die for this cause Taliban instills into their heads.
  • tell the children that their lives are worthless, that if they serve the holy prophet and fight for the cause, en
  • dless things will be given to them after they die.  That the real life will only begin after they have died for the cause, the prophet, the extremist Muslim ways.
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.''
Ben Walters

Boy exhausted after mammoth CS session - News - play.tm - 0 views

play.tm/...usted-after-mammoth-cs-session

Games Addiction Entertainment Romania Counter Strike Exhausted Nine

shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • the dangers of prolonged gaming sessions after a boy was taken to hospital after playing Counter-Strike solidly for nine days and nights
  • The fourteen year old from Romania was playing over the net via a local internet café, and doctors at the hospital said he was both mentally and physically exhausted.
  • The boy's mother said he had lost weight, stopped washing, skipped classes at school, and even stolen from his own home to fund the addiction.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The boy's mother is to press for rules which exclude those of school age from such establishment's after 10pm.
Ingrid Sande

Legal drinking age - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Legal_drinking_age

shared by Ingrid Sande on 28 Nov 10 - Cached
  • The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 states that revenue will be withheld from states that allow the purchase of alcohol by anyone under the age of 21. Prior to the effective date of that Act, the drinking age varied from state to state. Some states do not allow those under the legal drinking age to be present in liquor stores or in bars (usually, the difference between a bar and a restaurant is whether food is being served). Contrary to popular belief, since the act went into law, few states specifically prohibit minors and young adults from consuming alcohol in private settings. As of January 1, 2007, 14 states and the District of Columbia ban underage consumption outright, 19 states do not specifically ban underage consumption, and an additional 17 states have family member and/or location exceptions to their underage consumption laws. Federal law explicitly provides for religious, medical, employment and private club possession exceptions; as of 2005, 31 states have family member and/or location exceptions to their underage possession laws. However, non-alcoholic beer in many (but not all) states, such as Idaho, Texas, and Maryland, is considered legal for minors (those under the age of 21).[14] By a judge's ruling, South Carolina appears to allow the possession and consumption of alcohol by those 18 to 20 years of age,[15] though a circuit court judge said otherwise.
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