Soundtrack

"Just a Dream" - Carrie Underwood. I personally can't stand listening to this song only because it makes me sad, but in reality I love it. I have been dating my boyfriend for the past three years. He recently joined the military and is being deployed next year. When I listen to this song, it scares me because all I think is that he could lose his life.

"The Thrill" - Wiz Khalifa. This song just makes me laugh. I listen to it when I'm having a bad day and it makes me remember that life should be fun.

"Stand in the Rain" - Superchick. This song really motivates me to not take shit from anyone and be as strong as I can be.

"Who Says" - Selena Gomez. I really honestly don't like her music at all, but this song encourages me to love myself for who I am. I've always had a very low self esteem my whole life and sometimes I just need to stop and pause and tell myself that what everyone else says doesn't matter as long as what I tell myself makes me happy.

"Iko Iko" - The Belle Stars. I love this song so much. My mom and her friends used to sing it to me, my sisters and their kids when we were all really little. It's just one of those things that brings back memories.

"Headlines" - Drake. I can't get enough of Drake and his music. I watched Drake on Degrassi, a TV show, about 8 years ago before he ever became famous for his music. I'm a little bit obsessed.

Research

"As a sedentary behavior, and because children spend so much of their time with it, electronic media use has been charged as a major contributor to the rising obesity rate among U.S. children" (Vandewater et al 2008).

Vandewater, E., Park, S., Lee, S., & Lee, H. (2008). Disengaged Parenting: A Common Cause of the Relationships Among Television Viewing, Academic Performance, and Childhood Obesity?. Conference Papers -- International Communication Association, 1-24.

 This article is how partents have encouraged obesity by allowing their children to be influenced by media. I would use this quote in my research paper to explain one reason for obesity among people, that is that electronic media contributes to obesity. There are many contributors to obesity. Sometimes people don't think that media has an effect, which is why I wanted to find a source that proved or explained why it's a playing factor in obesity.

"Promoting healthy lifestyle habits among children is considered an important tool in the battle against the obesity epidemic" (Vandebosch and Cleemput 2007).

Vandebosch, H., & Cleemput, K. (2007). Television viewing and obesity among pre-school children: The role of parents. Communications: The European Journal Of Communication Research, 32(4), 417-446. doi:10.1515/COMMUN.2007.031

 This article looks at how televison viewing impacts obesitly among children. Parents have a huge influence on thier children. They are role models to the younger generation and by having a lack of physical activity and spending time watching television and being influenced by the media, they are allowing children to think it is okay to do. Like the quote says, promoting a healthy lifestyle can be a tool to fightr obesity because letting children build an unhealthy lifestyle very early in life only sets the path to an unhealthy life into adulthood.

Jon Ronson Chapter 10

In chapter 10 of Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test, Ronson listens to Lady Margaret speak about mental disorders and wonders how so many mental disorders came to in the first place and if there are problems with it. Ronson then talks about Robert Spitzer, the man responsible for editing the DSM, DSM-II, and DSM-III. The DSM-III was put together by a group of people coming together, sitting down, and throwing out possible items to add to the list and symptoms that were associated with the disorder. Eventually it leads to doctors using the DSM-IV to diagnose many patients with a mental disorder. It became so out of control where many doctors began misdiagnosing children with three common disorders such as autism, attention deficit, and childhood bipolar. The misdiagnosing only allowed these doctors to prescribe medication that wasn't needed in the first place. In one instance, it eventually resulted in an overdose of medication in a child.

These last few chapters really made me think. I always knew there were certain disorders that people were diagnosed with, and it's a bit funny that the people I know that have been diagnosed were actually diagnosed with the three most common disorders mentioned in chapter ten. It just made me very upset thinking that people are being diagnosed with disorders that were initially just made up in someone’s head to try to understand people's behaviors, and then they are being forced to take medication that they don't need. It isn't fair to people when some people are being misdiagnosed or charged for something they didn't do and then being locked away from society for it, or given medication that is useless. Realistically, I think life would be better if people didn't worry as much on diagnosing people with disorders that they can't say for sure are even a disorder and focus more on helping society be less judgmental and stop thinking people are so different for not doing what society says is normal. However, that doesn't mean I think that society shouldn't care if someone murders another person because they were doing something other than what is normal. I just think society puts too much stress on behaviors in society.

Ronson Chapter 8 Summary

In chapter 8 of Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test, Ronson believes that conspiracy theorists are psychopaths. He comes to this conclusion by first talking to Rachel North about her experience with a bombing on July 7, 2007. Rachel found that it was easy to cope with her experience by blogging about it. Eventually other survivors joined her and supported each other. In time, a group of conspirators led by David Shayler said she was made up and that the bombings on July 7th were an inside job. Ronson then met with Shayler and found that he also believed that the attacks on 9/11 were really missiles hid by holograms of airplanes. Shayler, later on, also tried to get people to think he was the Messiah. Ronson believed Shayler was a psychopath because he had no empathy for anyone involved in any of the attacks and thought very highly of himself.

I think both chapters were easy to understand. There were many interesting past events that were talked about, although all of the events were traumatic. I thought it was weird that the conspirators still didn't believe Rachel was real, even after they saw her in person. Even if some of them believed she was real, they couldn't be proven wrong about their theory, so they said she had to be mentally ill. It sort of reminds me of the day in class when we talked about facts that were proven wrong, but people doesn't like to admit they were wrong in the first place.

Blog Assignment 5

In Malcolm Gladwell's essay "Something Borrowed," he talks about plagiarism and he explains that copying someone else’s work is not what matters, but what you copy, how much of the piece of work you copy, and why you copied it. He first starts out by introducing Dorothy Lewis, a psychiatrist that works with serial killers. Dorothy wrote a book and eventually finds out that her "life" was stolen by Bryony Lavery, a British play writer, when she wrote the play "Frozen." Gladwell then talks about plagiarism in the music industry and processes music producers have to go through in order to write their own music. Some music artists have become mad about people stealing a medley from a piece without permission, but in reality it wasn't stealing at all. They simply wrote a song of their own using the same key notes. What Gladwell was saying is that the notes were not stolen because they weren't anyone's original work. Lavery thought that Lewis' work was news. She didn't think she was doing anything wrong by using what she had learned.

I liked this article by Gladwell. It was a little confusing her and there and I'm still not sure I understand what her was trying to say about plagiarism, but he had many good points. Personally, before reading this, I thought that plagiarism was plagiarism and that if you didn't give credit to your source then it was stealing. I didn't realize that there was another way to look at it. I guess it confused me a little about what is right and what is wrong when it comes to plagiarism.

Blog Summary 4

In chapter 7 of Jon Ronson's The Psychopath Test, Ronson discusses his journalist techniques with a friend, Adam Curtis. Adam criticizes Ronson's techniques, but thinks he has done better than some. For instance, he talks about a woman named Charlotte Scott. She wanted to be a journalist, but eventually she became a guest booker for television shows. She admitted to finding the most entertaining, crazy guests for the shows by first finding out what medications they took. Charlotte said she could identify how mad someone was by their medication. If they weren't taking any medication, they weren't mad enough; but if they were taking some type of medication for psychosis, then they were too mad. She had to find and in between. Ronson is thankful that he hasn't done things as bad as what comes close to what Charlotte did.

I liked both chapters; however, I was a little confused as to why chapter 6 was in the book. I understood most of it, but I didn't get the main point. The book is good, and I enjoy reading it. Although, I find that Ronson talks too much about Bob Hare's checklist now, and he doesn't talk much about anything else. I guess I'm just wondering if this book is going anywhere, and if there is any real point as to why Ronson wrote it or if he just wrote it because he was curious about psychopaths.

Research Question

What impact does America have on obesity?

I thought of this question because obesity has grown a lot over time. Even though America may be trying to grab a hold of the situation now, people aren't obese because they were born that way; society has had an effect on them in some way. I could start to look for answers by searching for books about obesity, or finding stories about people's actual experiences on how they became obese. I could also use what I know from my own experience. So if I found stories about actual experiences people had, I might find that there are different reasons people are obese and there might not be just one simple explanation. I might have questions that arise from answers I find. For instance, if I find an answer giving me information about a factor that contributes to obesity, would that factor be a contributor to other health problems? I might find, though, that a lot of factors that contribute to obesity are the same for many people and I may not have enough information to fill my ten pages.