With TV fare like MTV’s “Teen Mom,” Lifetime’s new movie “The Pregnancy Pact” and ABC Family’s “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” maybe we’re just feeding young girls ideas! While she does admit that these shows do not make teen pregnancy out to be much of a treat, it worries her that they depict pregnancy as “in some ways an enhancement of the teen mom’s social life.”
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Warning: Watching Teen Pregnancy Shows Could Impregnate You - Sara Libby - Ill Communic... - 0 views
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The Guttmacher Institute report that actually revealed the increase did not show that teen pregnancies went up five minutes after Lifetime aired “The Pregnancy Pact,” rather, they went up in 2006 – the most recent year for which current statistics on teenage pregnancies, births and abortions are available.
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The "Mozart Effect"- Real or just a hoax? - 0 views
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1998, Zell Miller, the governor of the state of Georgia, started a new program that distributed free CDs with classical music to the parents of every newborn baby in Georgia.
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idea came from a new line of research showing a link between listening to classical music and enhanced brain development in infants.
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mother was convinced that musical ability will not only help us to be more well rounded people, but also that it will help us to be smarter individuals.
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College students were required to listen to ten minutes of Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major, a relaxation tape, or silence.
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Auditory Integration Training, is showing great potential for benefiting the growth and development of various special children.
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there is some evidence that the brain is affected indeed somehow by music and that music lessons can not hurt the growing stages of a child.
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Does game violence make teens aggressive? - Technology & science - Games - On the Level... - 0 views
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Can video games make kids more violent? A new study employing state-of-the-art brain-scanning technology says that the answer may be yes.
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brain scans of kids who played a violent video game showed an increase in emotional arousal – and a corresponding decrease of activity in brain areas involved in self-control, inhibition and attention.
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he does think that the study should encourage parents to look more closely at the types of games their kids are playing.
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“Based on our results, I think parents should be aware of the relationship between violent video-game playing and brain function.”
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he scans showed a negative effect on the brains of the teens who played “Medal of Honor” for 30 minutes. That same effect was not present in the kids who played “Need for Speed.”
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And it’s also not known what effect longer play times might have. The scope of this study was 30 minutes of play, and one brain scan per kid
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But what about violent TV shows? Or violent films? Has anyone ever done a brain scan of kids that have just watched a violent movie?
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Kids in his study experienced increased emotional arousal when watching short clips from the boxing movie “Rocky IV.”
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Larry Ley, the director and coordinator of research for the Center for Successful Parenting, which funded Mathews’ study, says the purpose of the research was to help parents make informed decisions. “There’s enough data that clearly indicates that [game violence] is a problem,” he says. “And it’s not just a problem for kids with behavior disorders.”
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But not everyone is convinced that this latest research adds much to the debate – particularly the game development community. One such naysayer is Doug Lowenstein, president of the Entertainment Software Association.
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“We've seen other studies in this field that have made dramatic claims but turn out to be less persuasive when objectively analyzed.”
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And they’ve got plenty of answers at the ready for the critics who want to lay school shootings or teen aggression at the feet of the game industry. Several studies cited by the ESA point to games’ potential benefits for developing decision-making skills or bettering reaction times. Ley, however, argues such studies aren’t credible because they were produced by “hired guns” funded by the multi-billion-dollar game industry.
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Increasingly parents are more accepting of video game violence, chalking it up to being a part of growing up. “I was dead-set against violent video games,” says Kelley Windfield, a Sammamish, Wa.-based mother of two. “But my husband told me I had to start loosening up.” Laura Best, a mother of three from Clovis, Calif., says she looks for age-appropriate games for her 14 year-old son, Kyle. And although he doesn’t play a lot of games, he does tend to gravitate towards shooters like “Medal of Honor.” But she isn’t concerned that Kyle will become aggressive as a result. “That’s like saying a soccer game or a football game will make a kid more aggressive,” she says. “It’s about self-control, and you’ve got to learn it.”
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“Let’s quit using various Xboxes as babysitters instead of doing healthful activities,” says Ley, citing the growing epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States. And who, really, can argue with that?
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Eating Disorders: Body Image and Advertising - HealthyPlace - 0 views
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In recent survey by Teen People magazine, 27% of the girls felt that the media pressures them to have a perfect body
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and by the time she is 17 years old, she has received over 250,000 commercial messages through the media.
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This constant exposure to female-oriented advertisements may influence girls to become self-conscious about their bodies and to obsess over their physical appearance as a measure of their worth
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but many more implicitly emphasize the importance of beauty--particularly those that target women and girls.
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ty, and the bodies idealized in the media are frequently atypical of normal, healthy women. In fact,
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Women frequently compare their bodies to those they see around them, and researchers have found that exposure to idealized body images lowers women's satisfaction with their own attractiveness.
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Dissatisfaction with their bodies causes many women and girls to strive for the thin ideal. The number one wish for girls ages 11 to 17 is to be thinner
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One study found that 47% of the girls were influenced by magazine pictures to want to lose weight, but only 29% were actually overweight
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Research has also found that stringent dieting to achieve an ideal figure can play a key role in triggering eating disorders.
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Girls who were already dissatisfied with their bodies showed more dieting, anxiety, and bulimic symptoms after prolonged exposure to fashion and advertising images
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Source 6 - It is safe to keep the nuclear weapon! - 0 views
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g similar noises since the Eisenhower administration, and halting the spread of nukes (if not elimin
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The argument that nuclear weapons can be agents of peace as well as destruction rests on two deceptively simple observations.
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First, nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. Second, there's never been a nuclear, or even a nonnuclear, war between two states that possess them.
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"We now have 64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It's striking and against all historical precedent that for that substantial period, there has not been any war among nuclear states.
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Take war: a country will start a fight only when it's almost certain it can get what it wants at an acceptable price
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The Mozart Effect: A Closer Look - 0 views
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If brain activity can sound like music, might it be possible to begin to understand the neural activity by working in reverse and observing how the brain responds to music?
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Mozart selection showed an increase in spatial IQ test scores. A further test showed that listening to other types of music (non-specified "dance" musis) did not have the same effect.
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listener's preference--to either music or the narration of a story, and not particularly listening to Mozart, made for improved test performance.
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"There's nothing wrong with having young people listen to classical music, but it's not going to make them smarter."
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the experiments that compared listening to Mozart to silence, and which had not included listening to other compositions.
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Music is aural stimulation. The "successful" Mozart effect studies at best indicated that one area of cognitive processing increased only for a very short time, after listening to music for a short period of time.
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Video Games: A Cause of Violence and Aggression | Serendip's Exchange - 0 views
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when action is taken upon the frustration and stress, and the action is taken out in anger and aggression, the results may be very harmful to both the aggressor and the person being aggressed against, mentally, emotionally, and even physically.
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, violent video games were considered to be more harmful in increasing aggression than violent movies or television shows due to their interactive and engrossing nature.
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Although there have been studies that have found video game violence to have little negative effects on their players,
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However, violent games do affect children, as the studies show, especially early teens, and I feel that there needs to be a stricter regulation regarding the availability of these games to young children.
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The Debate over Foreign Aid - Council on Foreign Relations - 0 views
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-$14.6 billion--for global challenges like health, food security, climate change, and humanitarian assistance.
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structural shifts to reach those goals, including aligning foreign assistance more closely with foreign policy objectives, demanding greater accountability from recipient governments, and delivering more "bang for the buck" by increasing cross-agency cooperation, streamlining delivery of goods and services, and reducing U.S. government redundancies.
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In fact, $14.6 billion for the abovementioned global challenges amounts to a mere .38 percent of the $3.8 trillion federal budget.
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The problem is that polls show that Americans actually believe that spending on overseas health, development, and humanitarian and anti-poverty programs is 15 to 20 percent of the national budget. In fact, spending has never exceeded 0.5 percent.
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World Bank estimates show backward movement on key health and development targets since the onset of the economic crisis.
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2. Will the Obama administration's structural reorganization of foreign assistance achieve the administration's, or Congress', goals?
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media influence on anorexia - 0 views
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connection between the increasing thinness of so many celebrities and the alarmingly rapid rise in eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa?
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If a little girl sees a variety of thin/anorexic celebrities on TV, in magazines, decides with her friends that they are beautiful, that she'd like to look like them and, in an attempt to do so, she proceeds to lose 20 kilos, she's anorexic!
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The danger is that the numbers of women who have uncomfortable thoughts about their bodies are far, far higher than those suffering from full blown anorexia
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once these thoughts have first sprung into existence, all they need is a little nourishment to make them sprout roots...and grow.
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she just feels inadequate and guilty because she can't bring herself to starve her body to the same extent as the models and celebrities do.
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it's impossible to find a magazine without at least one spread on some amazing diet and exercise regime, always with the implicit message that we are 'wrong/lazy' if we don't follow it.
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not only does media influence on anorexia exist, anorexia is deliberately being perpetuated by the media and the mixed messages it portrays
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he media, especially ads and commercials for appearance-related items, suggest that we can avoid the hard character work by making our bodies into copies of the icons of success.
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ads reveals a not-so-subtle message ? ‘You are not acceptable the way you are. The only way you can become acceptable is to buy our product and try to look like our model, who is six feet tall and wears size four jeans - and is probably anorexic’
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In 1995, before television came to their island, the people of Fiji thought the ideal body was round, plump, and soft. After 38 months of Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210 and similar Western shows being beamed into their homes, Fijian teenage girls showed serious signs of eating disorders.
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To underestimate media influence on anorexia is to underestimate the power it has to influence the self esteem of us all.
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Why 'Teen Mom' became a phenomenon - NYPOST.com - 0 views
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Why are these young women stars? First, teen moms are hawt! They’ve held a prurient fascination ever since Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin’s pregnancies were revealed in 2007 and 2008. But while Spears and Palin were already famous, the “Teen Mom” stars have real struggles.
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Another reason for the cast’s popularity is their incredible ability to make news, on and off the air. Amber set off a controversy after episodes showed her hitting Gary and attempting to kick him down a flight of stairs. She is now being investigated for domestic abuse.
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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
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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
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In his speech to America’s schoolchildren last month, President Obama had a clear directive about video games: Put them away.
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But the latest science shows that there’s a lot more to video games than their dark reputations suggest.
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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.
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This adaptive challenge is “stunningly powerful’’ for learning, said John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at MIT.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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But whether Seung-Hui Cho, the student who opened fire Monday, was an avid player of video games and whether he was a fan of "Counter-Strike" in particular remains, even now, uncertain at best.
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Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the school shootings and the finger-pointing that followed, game players and industry advocates say they're outraged that the brutal acts of a deeply disturbed and depressed loner with a history of mental illness would be blamed so quickly on video and computer games. They say this is perhaps the most flagrant case of anti-game crusaders using a tragedy to promote their own personal causes.
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"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,
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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."
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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"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,"
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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."
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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.
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"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."
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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.
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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.
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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?
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"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,"
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"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."
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Jason Della Rocca agrees. "Everyone wants a simple solution for a massively complex problem. We want to get on with our lives."
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As the leader of an organization that represents video game creators from all over the world, Della Rocca knows the routine all too well.
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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?"
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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.
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Still, Della Rocca believes that people like Thompson are "essentially feeding off the fears of those who don't understand games."
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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.
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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."
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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.
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"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."
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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
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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.
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Other researchers are hoping to use video games to encourage prosocial behaviors - actions designed to help others.
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Generalizability to non-game situations is the big question surrounding other emerging games, particularly software that is being marketed explicitly as a way to keep neurons spry as we age. The jury is still out on whether practicing with these games helps people outside of the context of the game. In one promising 2008 study, however, senior citizens who started playing Rise of Nations, a strategic video game devoted to acquiring territory and nation building, improved on a wide range of cognitive abilities, performing better on subsequent tests of memory, reasoning, and multitasking. The tests were administered after eight weeks of training on the game. No follow-up testing was done to assess whether the gains would last.
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Now that researchers know these off-the-shelf games can have wide-ranging benefits, they’re trying to home in on the games’ most important aspects, potentially allowing designers to create new games that specifically boost brain power.
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“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.’’
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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.
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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.’’
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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.
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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.
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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
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(Of course, this is a double-edged sword. Games could reward negative, antisocial behavior just as easily as positive, prosocial behavior.)
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he classic Oregon Trail, which make players responsible for the well-being of other characters and feature characters who take care of one another.
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“Ultimately, the video game needs to be an entertaining experience,’’ Seider said. “The game has to be fun.’’
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Chinese suicide shows addiction dangers - News - play.tm - 0 views
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Games addiction Suicide Entertainment Chinese China Online
shared by Ben Walters on 14 Nov 10
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The suicide of a young Chinese boy in the Tianjin province has highlighted once more the growing dangers of game addiction, when those responsible don't understand or notice the risks of unhealthy play. Xiao Yi was thirteen when he threw himself from the top of a twenty-four story tower block in his home town, leaving notes that spoke of his addiction and his hope of being reunited with fellow cyber-players in heaven. The suicide notes were written through the eyes of a gaming character, so reports the China Daily, and stated that he hoped to meet three gaming friends in the after life. His parents, who had noticed with growing concern his affliction, were not mentioned in the letters.
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"His mother and I were very worried about him. But we knew little about the Internet and we did not know how to save him." Previously, Xiao's parents had found him starving after two days and nights in an internet cafe playing online role-playing games. When questioned about his bizarre behaviour, his father said that a tearful Xiao had told him that he had been poisoned by games and could no longer control himself.
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"In the hypothetical world created by such games, they become confident and gain satisfaction, which they cannot get in the real world."
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Foreign influences in games played by Chinese youngsters (most of which are imported) were accused of having a negative influence, of promoting 'demon worlds', to their impressionable audiences
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it seems more likely that it was issues in the victims own life which drew him to seek such extreme escapism.
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Ten myths of Indian economic policy - Rediff.com Business - 0 views
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The move to a Goods and Services Tax will reduce the burden of taxation. I hope not! Or the already massive fiscal deficit will soar higher.
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The exchange rate only matters to exporters. This is a common misperception, even among trained economists.
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Reducing fiscal deficits hurts growth. In the present "stimulated" environment, there is much anxiety that a reduction in the current record high fiscal deficits (over 10 per cent of GDP) will hurt growth.
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Subsidies on food, fuel and electricity mainly help the poor. Not so. The food subsidy mainly helps better-off farmers and consumers in only four or five states where the public distribution system has effective coverage.
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Foreign capital inflows are always good for our economy. Twenty years ago, most Indians believed the opposite, that all private foreign capital inflows were bad and somehow designed to impoverish us.
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Private provision of infrastructure can effectively substitute for government. Private public partnerships (PPPs) are the ruling mantra of the day. Since the government has failed badly in providing adequate power, roads, ports, water, sanitation and so forth, we must turn to PPPs for our deliverance.
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The trader (or middle man) is at the root of many of our economic problems. This is one of our really hoary and hairy myths. Whenever the rate of inflation rises, governments blame rapacious traders and deploy regulations to control their stocking and other activities.
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Foreign Aid for Development Assistance - Global Issues - 0 views
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both the quantity and quality of aid have been poor and donor nations have not been held to account.
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world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international development aid, annually
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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.
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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
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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
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Developed countries will provide, to the greatest extent possible, an increased flow of aid on a long-term and continuing basis.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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Humans are Responsible for Global Warming - CreateDebate - 0 views
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Does the Media Influence Anorexia on Teenagers? - 1 views
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media anorexia teenagers
shared by Simran Fabiani on 11 Nov 10
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When the media is constantly bombarding children and teens alike with messages about the "ideal" or "perfect" beauty, and uses underweight movie stars, singers, etc- then it's not hard to ask the question "Does the media influence Anorexia on teenagers?"
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portant to remember that some teenagers are more susceptible to eating disorders than others, and some are going to develop Anorexia or another eating disorder with or without outside influences such as media or peers.
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The latest example of this trend, is the recent come-back of Britney Spears- after she'd given birth to two children, she was ridiculed for wearing a skimpier outfit, due to being "fat." The problem is, although she'd had two children, she was far from fat- yet the media criticized her for daring to show her "less than perfect" body on national television. With issues like this, it's no wonder that children and teenagers are being bombarded with messages of what perfection is and how to "be" perfect.
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now unless an actress or model is thin to the point of practically being able to see bones, she is criticized as being "fat."
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The media influences teens' self-esteem and self-worth when it constantly bombards them with what society now considers ideal, and a distorted perception of what's "perfect." To stop the negative influence that the media has on children and teenagers, it's a good idea to limit exposure of body-image damaging programs, magazines and it's good
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it's extremely unusual- rare even- for an actor, actress, or other star to be "over-weight"- or even of a normal weight.
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When children see these images on television, in magazines, in songs, movies, etc- then it's no wonder that the rate of eating disorders among teenagers is rising rapidly, and now parents are feverishly searching for an answer.
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If Marilyn Monroe or Rita Hayworth were around today, they'd be labeled as "fat." What a twist, and a shocking example of how our society has misplaced standards of beauty and "perfection!"
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Shark Fin Soup Facts - 0 views
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But we’re not paying enough attention to what we are taking out of our oceans – sharks – and they’re being killed at the rate of up to 73 million per year.
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You may not really care much about sharks but our oceans account for about half of the planet’s oxygen supply and sharks play a key role in maintaining the health of the oceans.
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If you feel this way, you’re not alone, but it might surprise you to know that although there are more than 350 distinct species of sharks, only a few even bother with humans. The giant Whale Shark doesn’t even have teeth.
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show that for the 181 species of sharks for which they have adequate data, over 64% of those populations are noted as “threatened” or “vulnerable”. Of those, over 21% are categorized as “endangered” or worse. At least one species is already listed as “extinct in the wild.”
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Sharks are pulled onto fishing boats where their fins are cut off and their bodies are thrown back into the ocean as waste. A large percentage of these animals are still alive and suffocate. Even though less than 5% of the shark is fin, the rest is usually thrown away because of the economics of it. Shark meat must be properly refrigerated and takes up a lot of space on a boat. Fins, however, can be cut off, bundled, and hung to dry in large nets. It is the fin that produces the largest profit by far and can be sold for hundreds of dollars per pound.