Author Archives: mv149818

Killer at Large Documentary (Trailer)

According to studies the poorer you are, the more calories you consume. Socioeconomic status plays a major role when it comes to obesity. When we think of obesity, we associate it with unhealthy foods. The prepackaged, processed foods tend to be a lot cheaper than organic, fresh food. Therefore poverty may lead to a diet low in cost, but high in calorie packaged foods and fast foods. For instance, a person with low income will find it easier to take his or her family to a McDonalds and order food from the dollar money everyone other day. In the documentary, Killer at Large, an obesity researcher came to the conclusion that a single dollar could buy more calories of junk food rather than health food. After one of his observations, he discovered that a dollar could get someone 1200 calories of chips or cookies, but only 250 calories of carrots. A proper healthy diet can therefore be somewhat challenging to people of a lower socioeconomic class.

He also points out that a Happy Meal from the very well known fast food restaurant, McDonalds, contains over 700 calories. The amount of calories in this ‘Kid’s Meal’ should be considered to be an adults meal. Dr. Talbott takes on the adult meals at McDonalds, which normally consists of a Big Mac, large sized fries, and a large soda. This type of meal has over 1700 calories. That’s more than double the calories of what an adult meal should have. The calories in adult meals being provided by McDonalds should in fact be considered to be a “family meal”. This documentary is a real wide opener. It’s surprising how much a family’s socioeconomic status actually plays in society.

Deaf Family Finds Themselves Torn Between Deaf and Hearing Worlds (Part 1)

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, there are nearly twenty eight million Americans who consider themselves deaf or “hard of hearing”.  Deaf or H.O.H people are incapable of hearing what most humans take for granted, such as their loved ones’ voices, a dog’s bark, music and more. However, a surgically implanted electronic device was created in the late 1970s. The cochlear implant, otherwise known as the bionic ear, helps to provide a sense of sound to someone who is severely deaf. The cochlear implant seems like an easy fix for those who qualify, but, oddly enough, not everyone is on board with the device.

Large portions of the deaf population consider themselves as being part of a proud lifestyle. Many deaf people feel the same pride in their community as one would feel of his or her Hispanic or Asian community, for example. Although they may remain proud, plenty of people who are deaf feel almost threatened by the hearing majority. To them the cochlear implant can be seen as a way to annihilate sign language and their sense of community.

The innovative cochlear implant does not guarantee restoration of normal hearing but it does allow a person to identify sounds in his or her environment as well as another person’s voice. Eventually, an individual with a cochlear implant will most likely be able to learn to how to speak and converse in person. To outsiders (hearing people a.k.a most of the population) the rejection of what appears to be a gift of hearing will most likely remain puzzling. A deaf person really doesn’t want to gain the ability to hear? From our (hearing) perspective, this may even be considered a social deviance.

Gay Dads from JCPenney ad

According to last week’s chapter five, there are three main factors that play a huge role in person’s social identity: They are a person’s social class, their race and ethnicity, and their gender. Unfortunately much of society will tend to make quick judgments about an individual based on these three main elements. Discrimination is the unjust treatment of different categories of people especially on the grounds of race, sex and age. We would like to think that our modern generation is one of the most open-mindedness, accepting, and nondiscriminatory yet (because in fact we have come along way since the Civil Rights Movement) however discrimination is still very active in our society. Treatments of harsh inequality can now also be found in the gay and lesbian community.

This past month, in honor of Father’s day, JCPenney decided to run an ad featuring a same sex couple laughing and playing with their children. The two men in the photo are actually real life gay dads who won a contest by submitting a family picture of theirs. After the ad had been available to the public, a group by the name of  “One Million Moms” publically announced a boycott against the clothing department and urged others to do the same. Earlier this year, the same group made a fuss about Ellen DeGeneres being a JCPenney’s spokesperson. It seems as though a large part of our society in the United States wants to move forward and embrace homosexuality. JCPenney’s, Oreos, ABC Network, are just a few major companies willing to help lead the way however there are still many individuals and organizations who try and push us back.

Milgram’s Obedience to Authority Experiment 2009 1/3

Stanley Milgram, a social psychologists from Yale, conducted what is known today as one of the most controversial studies in the field of psychology. His experiment now known as the “The Milgram Experiment” was designed to see and understand how individuals would act under certain immoral orders were given from an authority figure. The video posted along with this blog is actual footage of Milgram’s experiment. This footage shows a “teacher” (participant being studied) administrating “painful electric shocks” to the “learner” (can be thought of as actor-part of the experiment) whenever the learner has answered a question wrong. The participant is told to increase intensity of shocks throughout the experiment which can be thought to reach “lethal doses of shock”. Throughout the whole procedure, the “scientist” (who is wearing a white lab coat which helps exemplify an authoritative figure) is sitting nearby the participant and demanding that he continues on with the shocks whenever the participant considers to end his role in the study. Approximately 65% of the participants reached the max. intensity of 450volts. Fortunately the shocks in this experiment were not actually being received by the “learner” as the participant was made to believe. However this experiment concluded that people have a high proneness to obey authority figures.

Our society is structured in a way in which certain authority figures such as parents, teachers, government officials and more are obeyed because we may believe that they are capable of providing honorable and ethical choices for us. Nonetheless the Milgram Experiment proved that human beings are capable of obeying not so ethical commands as well. Unfortunately extreme cases of this can be seen throughout the world: the Nazi Germany, genocide in Rwanda, suicide bombers of 9/11, etc.