Find an article that relates in some way to the things we have been talking about in class.
- First, summarize the text, explaining how you are understanding what they are saying.
- Second, connect it to our class. Why did you pick it? How does it connect to our class?
Include a link to the text. Should be about 250 words in length.
Some things we have talked about:
- Critical Thinking
- Ignorance
- Writing Process
- Research
- Population Control
- 2BR02B
- Problems/Solutions
- Decisions and Repercussions
Do Athletes get a Free Pass?
In the NFL there are thousands of highly proclaimed athletes that many young kids, teens, and adults look up to. Everything these pro athletes do effects younger generations of players. The fact that our society has adjusted so much to “second chances” means that these athletes typically are let off easy for crimes they commit.
Football has the number one arrest rate in the four major sports, the fact that the contact of the sport can carry to off the field issues is something to be looked at. A study that measured the aggression of High School football players throughout the season showed that as the season went on the players’ aggression rose. At a young age players having that aggressive nature is something wanted for the game, but when they get older or go pro they need to learn about the consequences of their actions. The players aren’t changing and more issues keep coming up with star players. For example, in February of 2018 Kareem Hunt, star Running Back for the Kansas City Chiefs, was accused of shoving a girl and kicking her. The video surveillance came from a luxury hotel in Cleveland, Ohio. After this the Kansas City Chiefs released him which is the right thing to do but the Cleveland Browns signed him. Also he will be suspended twelve games this 2019 season. I don’t think this is okay, it’s telling the younger generation you can get away with whatever you want as long as you have money and you’re famous.
I picked this article because I love football but the fact that these issues are becoming more and more of a problem in the NFL needs to stop and players need to be banned or suspended two years at least because that behavior shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere. This ties into multiple subjects we’ve covered in class, Kareem Hunt is ignorant the fact he put his hands on a women and is still on an NFL roster, suspended twelve games but makes millions playing the game he loves. How is that okay? On February fifteenth, 2014 Ray Rice had a psychical altercation with his fiancée where he knocked her out cold in Revel Casino in Atlantic City. He was released by the Baltimore Ravens and suspended by the NFL in indefinitely. Joe Mixon Star Running Back for the Cincinnati Bengals and New York Giants Kicker Josh Brown were both in assault cases as well. These players so were punishment appropriately but others got off a lot easier and the fact it’s not talked about more is astonishing. The solution to this problem has to be kicking these players out of the league like they did with Ray Rice the others shouldn’t get off easy. That shouldn’t be in the NFL because then it’s only being supported allowing those players to make millions still. If a regular guy did that he would be jailed right away. Athletes get a free pass it’s becoming a growing problem that needs to be fixed soon.
Links
https://time.com/3398946/nfl-violence-psychology/
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/04/sport/kareem-hunt-previous-incidents/index.html
http://www.espn.com/espnw/voices/article/18836719/when-comes-joe-mixon-confuse-domestic-violence-assault
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Should suicide be legal?
In June of 2019, a 17 year old Dutch teenager, Noa Pothoven, was legally allowed to end her life after contacting a “end-of-life” clinic. In the Netherlands, children that have reached the age of 12 are legally allowed to intentionally end their life after a doctor has decided the patient is suffering. Noa, at the age of eleven, was raped and attacked at a friends party. And as traumatic as that event was for her a year later she was raped again at a teenagers party by two men.
The article goes into how Noa has been unable to enjoy her life, how she merley is “surviving and not living” (paragraph 11). It is also stated that she was suffering from mental problems. But was this a mere act of selfishness? Was her traumatic event so horrific that it justified her ending her life? I chose this article because it directly relates to our class discussions in many ways. First as the Netherlands allow euthanasia at the age of 12. This could be the Netherlands forming a type of population control by making suicide legal. Being able to call a clinic and request your life to end is almost mirrored to the short story 2BR02B. And finally, ignorance. We discussed ignorance in class a great deal. Noa might have definitely been ignorant in taking her own life. Having a teenager whose emotions are already all over the place and adding in multiple traumatic events can lead to problems. Furthermore, having the door to making all of the problems disappear available at the age of twelve will definitely sway some decisions. Even if the alternate solutions are not always visible right away. But is it really the right decision to allow the option of suicide before you’re even allowed to drive a vehicle?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7103019/Dutch-girl-17-legally-ends-life-euthanasia-clinic.html
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The Jimbaran beach on the island of Bali, Indonesia is mesmerizing, isn’t it? Absolutely stunning scenery here in this photo captured by Photographer Onny Carr. In this photo, Onny Carr manages to capture a breath-taking photo adding layers to this photo. Carr is creating a sense of depth within this photo creating a background, foreground, and midground all in one photo to give his audience the best composition possible. Onny Carr is shooting with a wide-angle lens to give us that feeling of actually being there in person by simply shutting our eyes closed but even so. The Jimbaran beach is beautiful even with the sunset in the back, Onny Carr makes sure to keep the subject in the foreground staring at us until we feel the oceans pain. Pollution. When you look at this photo you can’t take your eyes off of the garbage laying right in front of you. Within that pile of pollution lies fishing nets, plastic, cans, clothes, paper, fishing lines, and bottles.
I chose this photo because it ties in for me what we discussed in class which was “Population Control” & “Problem/ Solution”. If we were to implement a systematic population control not just in the United States but across the globe. The amount of pollution being tossed into our beloved oceans would drastically decrease due to a decrease in trash being created by the overpopulated human species. I say population control across the globe because this pollution has not just started and ended here in the United States it stretched across to Indonesia. The problem is too much trash being created making it more difficult to correctly dispose of this pollution instead of throwing it into our own back yard. So, if not population control then we can somehow make a healthy eco-friendly way of properly disposing of all of the garbage we produce.
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“Texas teacher fired over Twitter rant to Trump about “illegal” immigrant students” (CBS news 2019).
“Why can’t we all just get along?” (King1992). Georgia Clark an English teacher at Carter Riverside High School in Fort Worth Texas was fired Wednesday for sending tweets to the President (Donald Trump) telling him about illegal students from Mexico and that she needed help to remove them from the school district. The Fort Worth Independent School district voted unanimously 8-0 for terminating Georgia Clark’s contract. Georgia Clark will be able to appeal the decision to Texas Education Commissioner in the next 15 days. This article was selected because I believe it has relevance to our topics in class and these kinds of issues that come up from time to time in the news impact my life personally.
Georgia Clark’s lack of knowledge on how her Twitter account actually works sent xenophobic tweets to President Donald Trump that she thought were private but were actually public. Georgia Clark’s tweets were in direct violation to student’s rights according to the Supreme Court ruling Plyler vs. Doe (457 U.S. 202 (1982) “that undocumented children and young adults have the same right to attend public primary and secondary schools as do U.S. citizens and permanent residents”. Georgia Clark has had previous incidents of inappropriate physical contact, behavior and language which she had been suspended without pay and reassigned. Georgia Clark’s blatant disregard for the law and insensitivity toward students show great ignorance on her part leaving us wondering how such a person remained employed as a teacher.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-teacher-fired-fort-worth-school-board-terminates-georgia-clark-twitter-rant-to-trump-about-illegal-immigrants/
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The article I read is about population control in China. It touches on advantages and disadvantages that China has encountered by enforcing these population control laws. One of the advantages they talk about is the standard of living. It has gone up immensely since they have started enforcing their laws. Another advantage that has come from the population control laws is that the access to natural recourses has increased dramatically. The main downfall that China has had with it is that they have gotten a lot of disapproval from other countries like the United States of America and it clashes with some of their populations political and traditional views. This follows the short story we read for class 2BR02B. They have a utopic life in the story where no one is hungry and everyone has a place to live. It is just at the cost of the ability to chose when people want to have a child. That is what is show to be the main conflict in the story, the ability of choice. China reflects this issue almost identically with their people wanting the ability to chose when they can have babies again. In the story people not having the ability to bring new life into the world whenever they wanted caused hatred and distain towards the people not allowing them. I believe this will continue to be the main issue with trying to enforce population control and a lot of other laws in general. There will always be someone who doesn’t like it.
https://www.reference.com/science/advantages-disadvantages-population-control-e7feeec9ae8237cd
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Population Control and Consequences in China
China is the most populated place on Earth with an average of about 1.2 billion people. Overpopulation in China caused problems such as degradation of land and resources, pollution, and detrimental living conditions. In 1979 the Chinese Government created the law “one child per family policy” where one family was only allowed to have one child and anyone who had more would be taxed an amount up to fifty percent of their income, or punished by loss of employment or other benefits. In 1980 the birth-quota system was made to monitor how many children were born for each family. Other solutions that were established was birth control programs such as abortions, vasectomies, etc, and families who had two children were required to get sterilized. The Chinese Governments solutions didn’t work as well as they planned. Like, it was difficult to get the public to obey the law, the birth-quota officials would lie about their reports on how many children were being born to avoid punishment, and rural communities would find ways around the law to have more children. This law not only caused that, but also a violent disapproval from the people in China and other countries. To fix the new problem the “one child per family policy” created the Chinese Government created the law “daughter only household” where if a family had a daughter first they were allowed to have another child, because so many people wanted a son. As of right now China is still dealing with overpopulation and are working to figure out better policies, more education, and urbanization. China has collaborated with “Population and Information Research Center (SFPC)” to help china reach their population target goals.
I picked this topic because when we were discussing the story 2BRO2B we talked a bit about the overpopulation in China and I didn’t know much about the topic, so I decided to learn more about it. It connects to our class because we talked about overpopulation and that is exactly the issue that China is still going through.
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Link: http://maps.unomaha.edu/peterson/funda/sidebar/chinapop.html
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“An uncomfortable truth”
“The world is ending,” a phrase that is all too often uttered in the face of any environmental discussion. No doubt there is some validity to it, but is it ever necessary to place that much pressure on a sum of data that might be able to predict our certain demise? Yes. The research that has been put into the world’s ticking clock has been extensive and thorough. Not that it is shocking, but some people still do care about the world’s survival. That is where the problem of population control gains its importance. In an article by Colin Feltham for The Guardian, the topic is discussed in further detail. To delve deeper into the topic, it is necessary to understand that population control does not just pertain to making laws about restricting family size. It is far bigger than that and applies to the population in the global context. For many people, they think of population control in the context of a family and a household. They should be considering the effects of a three-person family just as closely as a family of five. That is because in any regard, that family of three and that family of five both contribute to the growth of the population. At that point is where the true discussion can occur. By looking at the population from a larger perspective, it is more realistic to come up with solutions to the problem of “carrying capacity.” A carrying capacity is the population maximum that any given land mass can support for its inhabitants to survive. The reason that carrying capacity is important to bring up is that at the current rate of global population growth, the estimated maximum is just on the horizon. Based on an article by Live Science, “Many scientists think Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9 billion to 10 billion people.” What is to be done? People seem to keep having children and wanting grandchildren. Is having less children really the answer? In the mind of many environmentalist, it might not be. Finding ways to reduce waste, promote family planning, and educating the youth might be a start.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/feb/27/population-control-climate-change
https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html
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India’s population is currently 1.3 billion citizens, and by 2024 it will be the most populated country on planet Earth. This growth trend is so concerning to some politicians that it has been suggested by at least one that they should deny voting rights and government assistance to every child after the second. Still, there are others who do not find it concerning. One article that I was reading argued against the alarmed reaction to population growth in India. I chose the article because it tackled the problem of population growth, which is a concept we touched on in class and in Kurt Vonnegut’s story “2BR02B.” The writer of the article doesn’t view the trend of population growth as a problem, they instead viewed it as a strength. The writer of the article points to a few arguments in support of their belief, firstly “malthusian” politics. Robert Malthus is a figure from early English history who published a book outlining his concerns for population growth and gave his prediction for the inevitable destruction of society. The predictions did not come true and his name is now used as an insult for alarmist theories. This is an interesting article to look at because there is a lot of alarm surrounding population and some of it needs to be tempered. While the concern isn’t necessarily unfounded, we certainly need to be reasonable in how we react to these problems as denying rights to human beings who were unfortunate enough to be born third among their siblings is insane. The writer of the article I have posted stands on one of the far opposite ends of the arguments regarding population control but it is still an important perspective that we should consider. The writer has a lot of hope for the potential of any human being and as such any curbing of population growth means risking the loss of potential. The sentiment is nice, and through the barrage of numbers and statistics I think that it is very important that we do not lose our humanity.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/population-is-not-a-problem-but-our-greatest-strength/articleshow/69707310.cms
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This segment from Laura Ingraham show caught my intention because it made controversy over social media. For those that don’t know who Nipssey Hussle, he’s rapper from Los Angeles also entrepreneur. After Nipsey Hussle passing, Fox News Laura Ingraham was miss leading her viewers by saying that he made song called FDT (FUCK DONALD TUMP) which was incorrect the song was made by “YG” which Nipsey was featured, but she made seems it was Nipsey song also she forgot to informed her viewers the song was three years old when the trump was running for president. It got a lot backlash because it was a day after his killing, they release this vid of her. Snoop Dog, TI, The Game, and other people that supported Nipsey did not like what FOX NEWS was doing. They did not apologies for what they and a lot people from the public are asking for her resignation for false information and attacking Nipsey Hussel a day after his killing and laughing about it.
The reason I choose this vid and how it relates what we talk about in class. One, it was ignorance for mocking a man after the man was murder who was doing good for his community. Two, she didn’t do her research about the song FDP who YG was the original creator and Nipsey Hussle just featured in, but she sates that Nipsey was original creator also this song was three years old. That’s why I stay away watching news all they do tarnish people from their past and not what they do in the present and who don’t fallow the president.
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Childhood Obesity
Childhood obesity is an issue that is only getting worse in America as well as other countries. The article I chose talks about how childhood obesity is hurting kids adn adults everywhere and ways it can be prevented. This article states how diffferent ethnicities have higher statistics of childhood obesity such as hispanics and african-americans. It also talks about all the terribel affects it has on an individual and how it stays with someone forever, such as type two diabetes, hypertension, sleep apnea, poor glucose tolerance and depression. All of these are terrible side affects of being obese and it is sad if a young child has to experience it, there needs to be action taken to help prevent this. The article states a few solutions or helpful loptions that can be done to help prevent childhood obesity like breast feeding, which also has manyother benifits, also certian things that can cause it such as smoking while pregnant. There are various test a health care specialist can perform to catch an issue before it gets worse and to help control or stop the problem and it is reccomneded to get your child a screeing if they are overweight.
I chose this article because it relates to what we tlaked about in class by finding a problem and figuring out a solution. This article tlaks about the terrible affects of childhood obesity and all the terrible affects from it as well and ways it can be helped. There are many adults who have been obese their whole life dying from issues that if taken action as a chile could be prevented. There are also links in this artiloce that can help someone out hwo is stuggling from this or has a child that is. I think more people need to be aware of childhood obesity so children can get the help they need.
Link:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2004.00133.x
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There are many ways the actions that we took today could have the potential to affect something that we have never given any consideration towards. Knowingly or not the various decisions that we make are polluting the world, whether it is the emissions from our cars to the trash that does not always find its way to a garbage bin. To be more specific some of our actions are greatly affecting our ocean which is a bigger problem than some would care to admit. The gif that was included is one of a very large turtle that is minding its own business while scuba divers are admiring it. I chose this because I was in awe of how outrageously large the turtle appeared to be while next to the divers. It relates to the class because in various ways how we were talking about how being ignorant affects someone and the decision-making process to do something about it or not. The decisions that we are making, that of which could be in ignorance or just plain disregard for something that does not directly affect one’s daily life. That there are repercussions to everything that we do and affect something in some way whether we know it or not. The water in the video is clear but is not always the case in our oceans that are becoming polluted with trash. If one was to take the time to educate themselves on the things that are happening to our waters then someday the oceans can all be as clear as they are in this video.
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Journal #1
This is a post on Instagram from the United States Woman’s National Team (USWNT). The picture shows the woman’s soccer team standing side by side holding hands, while facing their back to the camera to display their uniforms with their names shown and the numbers’ of each player in rainbow colored order. The text on this post says “You Belong. Wearing our colors with #Pride as #OneNation.” From the text shown in the post, it is clear to say that the woman’s soccer team supports the LGBT community. My personal reaction was to smile because it shows that the United States national team does not discriminate. Although not everyone will have the same reaction I stand with my opinions. They are making this public to let people understand that we can all stand together no matter what. The post also says “You Belong.” I read this text and understand that every person belongs and people should not feel out of place because of who they are. I chose this post because this shows that there are problems going on with people who do or do not support the LGBT community publicly. There are many comments below the post on people who are angry, happy, upset, or even disappointed on the woman’s national team. The comments mainly show people commenting that they are happy about their support, but there are also a few that are angry. The people that disagree believe it is irrelevant or just do not agree with their text on the post. This is an issue that is still going on today. Some might not agree and some might, but it is only fair to try understand everyone’s perspectives and opinions.
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Critical thinking is the name of the game, but do you know how to play?
The Critical thinking definition I prefer is “reflective and reasonable thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do”. The world around us changes every day and every day we are served a plethora of information, some of it is useful, some of it not so much. If you become a critical thinker, then you will always have the tools to seek and apply knowledge. I chose this topic because critical thinking is a skill that I value highly and it’s an area where I can improve.
Characteristics of a critical thinker are curiosity, systematic thinking, being analytical, being open-minded and self-confidence. Curiosity would be the desire not just to know, but also to understand how and why to apply knowledge. Systematic thinking uses an organized approach to problem solving rather than knee-jerk responses. Being analytical applies knowledge from various disciplines, approaches a problem by examining the parts and seeing how they fit together. Being open-minded is being willing to consider various alternatives. Self-confidence is the sense of assurance that the problem-solving process produces a favorable conclusion or plan. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could demonstrate all these characteristics all the time? Too often I find myself lacking in self-confidence and trusting that someone else, with a higher title, knows what they’re doing, and I can trust their lead. Sometimes, that is wrong and can to serious consequences. Also, I don’t know why, but I’ve noticed that sometimes when you ask questions, it makes people feel uncomfortable. I’ve also learned that if it makes them feel uncomfortable, then they do not fully understand the current dilemma and there is probably a better way.
Critical thinking tools are interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, and self-regulation. Interpretation is clarifying meaning of events and data. Analysis is examining ideas, breaking them down into components. Evaluation is assessing possibilities, opinions, and usual practices. Inference is deriving alternatives and drawing conclusions. Self-regulation is reconsidering conclusions and recognizing the need to make changes. I don’t know about you, but I must force myself to question everything and everyone because I have to be convinced that the plan, answers or solution is best route available.
So, after this, critical thinking should be easy right? But too often I find my peers and myself getting caught up in the minutiae of it all. Sometimes I’m not the cool and collected person I wish I was, but if I took a step back, and used my critical thinking skills, I could not only “think” my way through a lot of dilemmas, but also have the self-assurance that I know what I’m doing and I know not to get caught up in the panic of a stressful situation. With critical thinking, you must be able to adapt, you have to be able to take a step back and see the big picture, and you have to be confident, when I say confident I mean you have to be absolutely sure that what you are committing to is the best decision or belief on what to do.
https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/critical-thinking-definition-with-examples-2063745
https://www.insightassessment.com/Resources/Importance-of-Critical-Thinking/Characteristics-of-Strong-Critical-Thinkers
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