Audience Text

This blog targets my ideal audience. Though my main argument in my review of lit and research is that television can jumpstart a lot of negative things in children's lives, what I really want to emphasize is that parents need to be watching their own kids, not just relying on television to do it because this is what television can do without the added influence that a parent is supposed to give. Television will always be "This is awesome. This is what your life could be like if you had this or did this" but parents are supposed to be the counteracting ingredient in that. Parents should be "This is reality. This is what will really happen. This is real life." But if children are babysat by their television, then they don't get that.

This blog may or may not cover that exact subject. But it does suggest things that will make your home safer for your child and ideas for activities and such. You can tell it's targeted towards parents because, well, it says so. Aside from being called parenting-blog, it also has articles with titles such as How To Avoid Mommy Burnout. They use language that assumes that you're experienced with things such as child rearing, instead of explaining more minor details. They assume you understand the experiences behind things like "teething", etc. and don't really elaborate.

Inspiring Video

This video is the one I chose for one that inspired me. The song is god-awful, actually. But I'm a huge Glee fan and it's usually weird to watch mash-ups like this. I know that the scenes are sometimes actually ridiculous when they're in places where they should be sad, but this one doesn't do that for me. It actually, literally, broke my heart. It has nothing to do with making an argument, not really (it's more of a 'what if' than anything.) and absolutely nothing to do with my subject but its so heart wrenching and well put together (though I maintain that the song is awful). It doesn't even give me ideas. It just makes me want my video to be good enough to share Youtube with it.

Unethical Use

I don't really remember using anything from the internet unethically. I'm sure I've done it, it's just not really something that I did and was like "Oh, I used this unethically" or set out to do. I think current copyright laws are a little too rigid for our current culture. That's not to say that people who publish their things online shouldn't have rights and be protected, but I think it's a little tedious to have to go hunting for sources and permissions for things you find on Google. If I just need a picture of a puppy, it shouldn't take me 3 hours of hunting and requesting and emailing to officially use it. Thankfully, there are a lot of allowances made for students and I haven't really encountered anything that irritating yet. However, I'm sure a lot of people have. Maybe there should be blocks and filters regarding copyright on search sites. That way, if I use a source, I can be sure that I'm not using something that someone copyrighted and didn't want me to use.

Since We're Talking About It...#5

This annotation went much better, I think. I had a lot of trouble writing mine up last year and I really had no trouble at all this year. Which may mean that I still didn't do it right, but still! It wasn't as bad.

Professor Lackey pointed out that I may have had trouble annotating last year because all of my sources said the same thing. So this time, I've tried to choose a lot of radically different sources. I picked some issues that have impacted health and wellness--obesity, violence education--and found some resources on how they impact children and how they impact society. I think this way, I can end up with a wider variety of information than before.

Annotation

Harris, Jennifer L., John A. Bargh, and Kelly D. Brownell. "Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior." Health Psychology 28.4 (2009): 404-13. Print.

This article details the results of two experiments performed on a group of children and a group of adults. Each group was shown ads detailing certain types of food and afterwards, their eating habits were monitored. With both the group of adults and the group of children, they were prompted to eat no matter what type of food was advertised for them, when given a general snack food. But when they were allowed to chose their food, the more sugary and fatty the commercial seemed to be, the more sugar and fat the snacks chosen had. There seems to be a pretty strong influence from food advertising on how people choose to eat (such as what and how often they eat).

The source seems reputable. It was published in journal regulated by the APA, so unless it was an April Fools edition, there has to be some merit to the study. It also means that the APA probably monitored or approved or were somehow involved with the study in its early stages. It may be a little bias, though. They had the participants watch tv either with food, or had them watch the advertisements and then offered them food to choose from. But they didn't leave it up to the participants whether or not they wanted food at all without food in front of them. It's entirely possible that the advertisement had nothing to do with it and it was the food itself that appeared in between the experiment and the recorded result that influenced the participants.

This resource is one of the 3 main points I want to hit with how television influences people. If advertising influences unhealthy eating habits, which leads to obesity, which leads to all kinds of health problems and disability and a general decline in wellness, then food advertising has a direct link to the decline. If we start with this at a young age, these children whose parents allow television to babysit them never have a chance at a healthy life if this is what they're taught is "cool" or "good".

Since We're Talking About It...#4

So just as a preliminary to tomorrow's class, I thought I'd google television and how it's related to childhood development.

I got over 30,000,000 results.

I have no idea what to do with this. Maybe it's because I'm tired and just off of the heels of writing a paper for my midterm in another class, but my brain is shot just looking at that number. Professor Lackey gave us some direction but hopefully tomorrow will provide a little more.

Right now? I really need a nap, before the number 32,900,000 makes my brain explode.

In-Class Discussion #5

In class, we've been talking a lot about annotated bibliographies and our review of literature. I can't help but think about the last annotated bibliography I wrote, during my senior year of High school. It was about my resources for my senior project, an analysis on Edgar Allen Poe's influences on Steven King. Most of my resources all said the same things, biographies on each writer and the books I was using to compare them.

The result was really, honestly atrocious.

I got a horrible grade on it, and mostly because she said there wasn't enough there for her to evaluate. But she didn't tell me what she wanted to evaluate in the first place and I was really frustrated by that.

In short? I know Professor Lackey has given us very clear guidelines for this project, but I'm still pretty nervous about it. It can't possible be worse than last time, at least.

Research Proposal

For my research proposal, I want to explore how television impacts our community health and wellness. My initial research question would be, I guess, does the media (specifically television), have more of an impact on our health and wellness than just the cultural changes we know it influences? I think its worth addressing because television, at this point, is such a big part in our lives. Not only do we use it for entertainment, we use it for education and not just in classrooms. Television programs are being developed for children younger and younger as a way to introduce them to things like math and reading before they even enter school. But, what often happens is that parents begin to rely on television as a babysitter. They sit their toddler in front of the tube for Nick Jr., get distracted and forget to turn it off when Dora and Team Umizoomi turn to Spongebob, iCarly and Big Time Rush. And what about when children get older and parents stop monitoring them all together? What does watching Jersey Shore do to a 12 year old New Jersey girl? Does Spongebob really give little kids ADD?

I know about the Spongebob study, and I know shows perpetrate stereotypes about things like race (on Glee last night, Mike Chang, an Asian student, got an A- on a Chemistry test. They called it an Asian F. How's that for stereotyping?) But those are mostly cultural and individual changes. What kinds of impacts do those things have on the health and wellness of the community when they're widespread?

I'll need to find more studies on subjects like the impact of reality television, scripted shows and other cartoons. We Googled studies about reality television in class, so I know those are out there on the internet. For this, because the studies would be more recent, I think the internet would be my best resource, a place where information is changing constantly, as opposed to a book where they can only change the information a couple times a year at most.

In-Class Discussion #4

Well, we haven't had much class, lately.

We've been talking a lot about these reflective overviews in the classes that we have had, and while they don't seem too bad, it does kind of bother me that they count for more than the project itself. I even understand her reasoning behind why it's that way, but I feel like if its' that important, it should be it's own grade, not overshadow the project we all worked so hard on. At the very most, it should be a 50/50 gig.

Project Review

If I could do this project over again...

The interview process was a lot of fun, actually. I enjoyed talking to Ally and she's very observant of the world around her. I got a lot more information than I expected to from someone so young. I probably would have done it earlier, definitely, but otherwise the interview itself was pretty easy.

I definitely would have done it earlier, though, so that I could have started my reflection earlier. It's supposed to be about 3 pages and I'm just not sure I have that much to say about the aftermath of this project. I feel kind of bad about that, but that's the truth of the matter. I would probably feel a little better about it if we hadn't lost the day of working on it in class and I'd been able to write and talk about it with the teacher nearby.

I also probably would have gotten a CD...I thought the professor had them for us, but just totally forgot to ask for one...

Since We're Talking About It...#3

I did my interview today! It went really well. My only concern is that it turned out more like a conversation than an interview, which I guess is a good thing at the same time. But there ended up being a lot more back and forth than the typical interview. Maybe that's just a sign of how comfortable we both were. I was a lot less nervous than I was expecting to be. Contrary to my former beliefs, the interview was really the easiest part.

Now off to do the summary. THAT'S gonna be the part I really don't want to do...I think I'd actually rather do a transcript than the summary and timeline. At least then I'd just be copying.

In-Class Discussion #3

During class, we listened to another oral history interview regarding health in the surrounding counties. The interview was a little difficult to listen to and process, the sound quality was bad and the interviewer talked to 3 women, making it hard to determine who was coming from which county and as such, determine the state of those counties.

But something that I noticed they talked a lot about was access. There really isn't a way for people in more rural areas to gain access to healthcare. I haven't seen a bus stop since I moved up here and while I"m sure they're around, I haven't seen a doctor's office or hospital either. Imagine how many bus stops and transfers someone with a car would have to take to get to the doctor's office? But the real question is, what do we do about it? Do we bus people to doctors offices a couple times a day? Have spots just like bus stops? Don't hospitals have shuttles for loved ones who don't have cars?

It's just something to think about.

Oral History Status Update

Today, I spoke with a student native to this area who is currently attending UNCP. She said she is willing to participate in the study and I gave her the breif introduction we were given by Dr. Lackey. For more information, she gave me her email and I sent the formal introduction in addition to my contact information in case she had any other questions. At this point, we are trying to set up an interview date.

Since we're talking about it...#2

Since we're talking about the STD experiments run in the US and Guatemala in the 20th century, I figured I'd go see if that was all that got snuck by us. It's not.

In 1953, a man committed suicide by jumping out of his hotel room window. It was later revealed that his jump was a result of being dosed with LSD by his colleagues. And he wasn't the only one. Right around that time, the CIA and US government thought it would be a good idea to release LSD in aerosol form into the busy New York subway system. The more detailed article can be found here.

Where are we? Where are our heads, why don't we know these things? What makes us such oblivious, easy targets for the very people that are supposed to protect us? We take self-defense classes and every measure possible to keep ourselves from being targets against muggers, murderers and con artists. Maybe we should start taking precautions to protect ourselves from the government too. I'll be on the corner passing out gas masks, tin foil hats and lists of private practice doctors if you need me.

In-Class Discussion #2

In class, we discussed the Tuskegee and Guatemalan experiments in more depth. The apology issued by President Clinton was called into question, however, once we discovered that the movie Ms. Evers' Boys was released just a few months before the apology was publicly made. It was speculated that the apology was only given because the experiments could no longer be swept under the rug and kept away from the public and the people of the United States were outraged that this had been kept from them.

This makes me wonder what else we, as a people, are missing? Are we really that oblivious to what is going on around us, or does this government that we supposedly run have more control over us than we think? We talk about Chinese censorship and the like, talk about how ridiculous it is, but are we really much better when we experiment on our fellow Americans without their consent and hide the results when it goes bad? I'm becoming increasingly disappointed with us as a nation.

Guatemala and Tuskegee Syphillis Studies

In a period between 1932 and 1972, both Guatemalan men and African American Men in Tuskegee, Alabama were infected with venereal diseases, the most notable among them syphillis without their consent.

The men in Tuskegee were infected first, injected and tested frequently. Some were even told that spinal taps that were a part of the study were special free medical procedures. And when penicillin became available as a cure, none of the men were treated with it and their life expectancy dropped by almost half.

The Guatemalan men ranged from soldiers to prisoners and were sent infected prostitutes as "gifts", and infected through scrapes doctors made on various parts of their body.

Though the second group of men were infected for the purpose of testing penicillin as a cure, both of these experiments were conducted without ethics of any sort, violation all but two of the Nuremberg Codes established after WWII specifically for this kind of testing. There was no type of informed consent and especially in the Tuskegee trail, the doctors tried very little to reduce the risk of long term issues as a result of their experiments.

If they had informed the men of what was going on and administered medicine to the men in Tuskegee, or at least offered some sort of compensation to those families, they wouldn't have violated so many ethical guidelines. The downside there, though, is that almost no one would willingly be infected with syphilis.

Since we're talking about it...#1

This week, the theme has been how our health relates to our wealth. Some of the things that plague the lower levels of society, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and, our topic of discussion for now: obesity. We've learned that it's one of the things that we are faced with to our detriment the less we make a year, and now, ironically, we learn that it's also the biggest financial detriment as we age.

This article lays out the vicious circle. Obesity leads to heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers and strokes. Those illnesses lead to loss of employment and a huge shot to your income when one is relegated to living off of disability checks. Loss of job and income leads to a drop in social status, which, as we've learned over the course of the week, leads to the drop in quality of life, namely: time for healthy activity and access to healthy food. Less access to healthy food and activity leads to, you guessed it: obesity. And then we start all over.

So over the course of the week, we've gotten quite a few reasons for the rise and fall of health as we cross "classes". Stress, access to health insurance, and access to healthy activity and food. For a class-less society, we sure have what looks like a social-class disparity.

In-Class Discussion #1

In the first few days of class, we watched a video relating, once again, wealth to overall health and life expectancy. It broke the correlations down almost exactly, around more or less 2 years per $20,000 difference. Though the correlation is expected, the preciseness is not. The video did, however, offer a reason for the correlation, the reason being stress hormones and their long term effects on the body.

What I question there is how it this correlation works with people who move classes in our "Classless" society. How do children born in section 8 housing who graduate Ivy League and become six-figure income adults fare? Or what about children born into upper middle class who are knocked down below the poverty line after the economy crashes in their adults years? Do they average out or adopt the life expectancy of their class as they move?

Health Status and Health Care Access of Farm and Rural Populations

This article explored the differences of "metro and non-metro" (city and rural) and "farmer and non-farmer" households in terms of their health status and access to adequate healthcare.  The findings were pretty typical, the rural areas having less access to health care (though it does seem that the health care they do have access to is about on par with metro area healthcare in terms of service.) and the non-farmer households within nonmetro areas are more at risk for things like obesity and adopt more risky behaviors such as smoking.

We generally see the same patterns in nonmetro areas as we see in metro areas, including the one I'm from (Durham, NC). While farmer households have more work-related injuries, they're more likely to be higher educated and as a result, have higher qualities of life as opposed to the nonfarmer households. We see the same trends in the metro areas, where professionals and highly educated individuals live higher qualities of life due to their better access to medical care.

What does worry me slightly about the research is the way they obtained their data. While they'd be hard-pressed to find any other way but survey to obtain this information, it becomes automatically objective. People are often reluctant to admit that they are not as healthy as they would like to be and when you survey people, you are automatically open to their biases and hinderances.

That being said, the study does seem to correlate with everything we see and hear on a regular basis regarding health in relation to social status.