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Another interesting article that I found was the article on homosexuals and the legalization of it. For some people this has become a controversy. This is because many religious people are strictly against it because they say that the bible clearly says there should only be marriages between men and women. Some people were really sad and angry with this legalization. However, I feel that everyone can live their life as they please, and if this is going to cause them happiness then they can go ahead and get married. At the end the only one that can judge them is God. But I do also thing is not the right thing to do, and this topic makes me confused. This is the why I decided to do research about this very controversial topic.

The article says “The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental “right to marry” that extends equally to same-sex couples. It tossed a highly emotional issue into the election year while opening the way for tens of thousands of gay people to wed in California, starting as early as mid-June”. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-gay-marriage17-2008may17,0,7229587.story. Religious people plan to overturn it by voting against it in November. Some people in courts have argued that this goes against respect and dignity and a good or bad example for their children.  “Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” George wrote for the majority. “An individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.”(wwww.latimes.com). This means that just as two people from different nationalities get married, gender should also not be an issue and homosexuals should also have the right to get married and lived a happy life.

In class we read an article based on designer babies and I found an article of birth defects. I decided to look for the total opposite of healthy babies, the ones with birth defects.  According to the video on YouTube the cause of birth defects are called teratogens. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZpIZav35Vc   These are agents that cause malformation of an embryo or uterus. Some of these teratogens are tobacco,alcohol, accutane, an acne medication. According to the video some less common teratogens are mercury and radiation.  According to www.kidshealth.org, they are other causes of birth defects, like rubella syphilis and chicken pox.

“ Sometimes, a disease or defect can occur if only one parent passes along the gene for that disease (even though the child receives a normal gene from the other parent); this is called dominant inheritance and includes birth defects such as achondroplasia (a form of dwarfism) and Marfan syndrome (a disorder characterized by abnormally long fingers, arms, and legs)” (www.kidshealth.org).  Even if one parent has the disease and the other doesn’t the child can still be born with a birth defect. Other cause of birth defects are error of the formation of sperms and eggs, this can cause the child to have Down syndrome. This is because the baby is born with too many, or too little or one defective chromosome.

According to the article some common birth defects are: cleft lip, which is a long opening between the lip and the nose, cerebral palsy, congenital hip dislocation, this occurs when the round upper end of the thigh bone does not sit inside the socket of the pelvis properly, congenital  hypothyroidism, which happens in 1 of 3,000 births. This is when the baby’s thyroid gland is absent or undeveloped at birth.

There are many causes of birth defects, even though there are also genetic causes women should take really good care of themselves during pregnancy.  They should eat right, not smoke, not drink and not use any medication that will affect the death of the baby. However, the birth defects are not preventable, but women should take a lot of precaution.

In class we discussed a lot of inventions so I decided to research future technology. I was curious to find out what new inventions will the future bring to us. I found an article that talk about some of the futures technology that is expected in the future. By the year 2050 Brazilians have a vision of a new vehicle. “This vehicle is powered by 90hp electric motor and features aluminum body structure for urban use. The concept uses less energy to help prolong your ride and is equipped with various equipments that improve driver’s interaction with the other vehicles” (  http://itechfuture.com/tag/future-inventions/).  There will be a kitchen of the future in which families can cook watch TV and dine all at the same time. There will also be a future music player from 2020 from apple where people would not need earphones. It will have ultra sound waves that will travel straight through the inner ear.

However there is a polemic and people are scared with all these new technologies because people are scared of the number 666, the number of the beast.  According to www.bible.prophecy.com/techmark.htm, there will be a time where people will have a smart card implanted in them where they will have their money ids and passports and any other paper or document they will need. Already we have something similar according to the article it is called Mobilspeedpass, where when you want to make a payment you just wave this thing and it processes the payment for you.  The technology is getting very advanced and I feared that this passage in the bible on revelation 13:11-18 will occur soon. The passage says “ Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb, but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all the authority of the first beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth. He ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast that was wounded by the sword and yet lived. He was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that he could speak and caused all who refused to worship the image to be killed. He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had that mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:11-18)

With so many advances in technology and new inventions popes, priests and many people are afraid that the men will surpassed God and this prophecy will come to life. However, we should live the present as is and just hope the best for the future, because no one knows when this will happen.

We discussed in class the problem of obesity and how it is affecting kids in schools and their families and how the government is intervening to help them. I found an article about Bulimia Nervosa. This is another weight disorders that affects many women. They starve themselves because they just want to be skinny like movie stars and tops models. They are aiming for perfection because this is what they show in TV, the perfect body, perfect face and perfect hair. Many models are bulimic. I even saw in another article that the model agents tell the models to starve and to never gain weight. He says that they can barely eat to maintain their very skinny figure. According to the article of www.uihelathcare.com Bulimia nervosa includes two elements binge eating and self-induced vomiting. Patients cannot control their eating so they binge eating. However, when the person feels dissatisfied with her body she starts dieting a lot and then vomiting what they eat. They are so scared that they will be fat that they basically throw up everything they eat; in order to not gain any weight. Many patients can develop bulimia even in their 50’s. The article says that typically patients consume 10,000 to 30,000 calories a day and binge throughout the day.

Bulimia has several complications like cardiac arrhythmias, renal damage and seizures. Most of the time to take care of bulimic persons, doctors hospitalize them if some of them want to commit suicide. About 50% of the patients take antidepressant drugs to help them recover. According to a you tube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq8_Ue3HpxU, “mostly teenagers and college students especially white women are at risk and people who have a family history of this disorder.  In the video we can see women being extremely extremely skinny seeing themselves fat. According to the video statistically “Bulimia affects men 5-15% of the time, but it affects women 85-95% of the time.

Felipe Baeza, 24, is an undocumented Mexican young man who left his country with his parents when he was 7 year-old. When they first came to the United States they lived in a crowed basement in Chicago. Felipe Baeza’s dream was to become an artist. He was overjoyed to receive a full tuition scholarship for his art school because he knew that his parents did not have money to send him to college.

Mr. Felipe worked in an East Village restaurant. The restaurant was a stepping stone into his dream art career before he graduated with a degree in art from The Cooper Union.  He found a job, but when the employer asked him about his legal status, he was reluctant to tell them he was undocumented. He was frustrated and didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t be the person he wanted to be. He noticed that he had very limited opportunities in the United States. He couldn’t work in any art work, not even to assist an artist. He also was arrested once in Georgia because he was undocumented but later he was released. Many years of study and his art dream became empty and he had to abundant his career. He joined a group of people who are also undocumented to find ways to survive in the United States.

This article is related to the movie “Maid in America” and presents many people who came here to pursue their American dreams, but couldn’t get what they really wanted.  These people do not have equal opportunities because they don’t have a legal status.

Children become addicted to junk food today.  They are controlled by advertising and unhealthy products because they are not able to distinguish between good and bad. According the movie that we watched yesterday today children have developed many kind of diseases in their early age such as bi-polar, diabetes, ADHD, hypertension and more. These were unheard of in my childhood. The effects of the fast food on the children are permanently harmful. The excess sugar in the food leads to diabetes, while the saturated fat content throws the child in the clutches of obesity.

According to the New York time, food and beverage advertisers found a way to make their own guidelines and provide more junk food to children without worrying. These companies want to “self-regulate” and set up their own standards and therefore unhealthy food becomes “healthy” today.  For example, last week that McDonald’s invented its “Happy Meal” by adding a few apple slices and removing a few French fries.  The article mentions: “overpriced junk food sold not by its value but by its marketing scheme.”

The most evil offender is soft drinks, which account for a great amount of product placement appearances. Coca-Cola alone accounted for a very high percentage of product placement occurrences viewed by children. When children watch these advertisements, it increased their consumption of junk foods including soft drink.