I was extremely disturbed after watching this video. I am both American and Jewish and I would be a direct target for these kinds of people. This is a video about what Americans think about and why they have such strong fear when they think about Islam and the Middle East. Because these people, the Jihad, have such a high presence in the news and media, it is for good reason why people are scared of the middle east. “What every American needs to know about Jihad” is how it starts with a crash. The goal of Jihad is world domination. It then tells us the terrible things that its done such as taking over Iran, kidnapping Americans, suicide bombings, and other bombings of places such as the US embassy Annex in Kuwait. Hijackings, restaurant bombings, the bombings of the world trade center, and massacres are also listed along with disturbing pictures and sounds of bombs are then shown. They then show us that Jihad’s goal is death to America. There is a quote of Osama bin Laden that basically says it is G-d’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money. I of course understand better then to categorize all of the middle east to be with this terrorist group, but I think that it is completely rational for Americans to fear it. I think that because this group is all most people know when they think of the middle east, that is where the fear comes from. Fear is a very powerful thing to people it can cause you to categorize and stereotype an entire country simply for fear of some crazy group. They showed pictures in the video of people who had signs of swastikas and posters that said destroy Israel. It would be unreasonable for me not to be afraid. I know better then to think that every Islamic person is crazy and involved in Jihad, but I think it is extremely reasonable of me to have a fear in the back of my mind that something god forbid can happen. We learn when we are young to not talk to strangers even though we learned in class that most likely a stranger would be the one to help you if your child was ever lost. I think that this is kind of like that. We learn about all of these crimes of hate that have occurred, but realistically the Jihad is not a very large group and not every Islamic person is a part of it.

I think it is crazy how thee are more deaths from soldiers taking their own lives as a result of dealing with what they’ve seen in war, then in the war itself. The military lost 761 soldiers in combat but 817 had taken their own lives over the same period. I think that this is something that they don’t want the public to know for fear of people no still enlisting, but I think the public also doesn’t want to hear. They don’t want to discover that the people who are supposed to be their heroes are simply just men and these men cant handle the stresses that are put on them by war the same way that almost all of the general public wouldn’t be able to. They know that the problem has come from repeated combat deployments, and the only way to lower it would be to reduce the number of deployments per soldier, which could only be done if they expand army’s troop strength, or to reduce the number of soldiers sent off to war. They have apparently spent millions of dollars to getting these soldiers help who are deployed but clearly efforts haven’t been working. Research suggests that it takes a full 3 years of dwell time to relieve a solider of the stresses brought on but just one year of combat. The soldiers are trained to use controlled violence and aggression while suppressing their emotional reactions, which is simply inhuman and should not have to be done. The soldiers shouldn’t have to be either not allowed or embarrassed to display their emotions once they come home from war. Killing is not something that we as humans are programmed to do. These soldiers have been brainwashed to think that taking another persons life is okay and that is something that really scares me. We need to remember that yes these men are heroes, but they are not inhuman and they need more help then what they have been given in order to decrease this insanely high rate of suicide.

This story seems to foreign to me its almost as if it is out of a scary movie or novel. I cannot imagine they type of life that man had to go through. It practically brought tears to eyes reading this story. Throughout my life I have of course been afraid, by my mom always tells me, “Don’t be scared, ill let you know when its time to be scared and right now isn’t it.” There never has been a time when she has told me that I do in fact need to be scared, everything has just be childish anxiety, and I couldn’t be more thankful for that. Because of this however, I cannot even begin to imagine how this boys life was growing up. How you need to be scared every time you go down to eat dinner that your mother may or may not have put poison in your meal. I also have a great relationship with my father, I cannot even fathom the idea that he could possibly hurt me or rape me. I do not blame this man at all for murdering his parents. I know that that is a sick thing to say, but these people should not be allowed to have children. If everything in this story is true then these people are beyond sick and should have been jailed themselves. My heart goes out to this man who has suffered so much abuse that I couldn’t even write about if I was trying to write a horror story. I wouldn’t even be able to think of the things that he said his parents actually did to him, he lived it. I don’t think however that he should have killed his parents so late in his life. I think that by that point in his life he should have just moved away and tried his best to forget about his painful childhood. It really touched me at the end when he said, “People ask me how I can live with a life sentence. I tell them that my life was never that good and it is not that bad now. As far as fear goes, I am still afraid but I deal with it and do not show it. If they know you are afraid, you are done for. If you appear confident they usually leave you alone. I am not suicidal anymore. On good days I live for God. On bad days I live to spite all of the people who have wanted me dead. Including my own family and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” This is scary that people didn’t believe him. I can’t even imagine how frustrating it could be for him to try and plead about the life that he went through and have his own siblings simply say that he is a liar. My heart really does go out to this man I feel awful for what he has been through, no one should ever have to go through the things he did, and live in the fearful reality in which he lived.

Being a women is most definitely more then you’re physical appearance. Its not how large your boobs are or how skinny your waist or how shinny your hair, its about being a daughter, sister, mother, or friend. Women come in all shapes and sizes, colors and heights, and the media or Hollywood shouldn’t have the power to tell people that they aren’t beautiful because they aren’t a models size. Especially in recent culture, looking like a model has caused serious illness to many women such as anorexia and bulimia, and I think that this is a scary and ridiculous reality. I think that it is ridiculous because women shouldn’t feel that they need to look like a model on the cover of a Cosmopolitan magazine to feel beautiful. Beauty is within and therefore we are all beautiful. If you take away body image, all women are the same. Women of different shapes sizes and cultures have a bond that cannot be broken. We are all daughters and we can all be mothers and we can offer things that men defiantly cannot. We can have a child and be emotional and sympathetic and cry and be the real women of the world. Hollywood has more recently begun to portray all different types of women, and I think that this is great. Women shouldn’t be famous for how skinny or stereotypically beautiful they are, they should be famous for the talent that they have and lately that’s what has been happening and I personally really like it. All women are all the same, and all women are beautiful. The more that people, men and women both, realize this, the better women everywhere will be. Women together have gone through so much in the past and have made such advancements in both the work place and at home. They have so much to offer such as their knowledge and skills, and women shouldn’t have to feel that they need to dress in a certain way in order to get the recognition that they deserve from men. They also should never feel that they have to be a sex object in order to obtain the respect that they deserve. Women have come so far in terms of the power that they now have so it surprises me how many women are still so insecure in what they are capable of. More women need to know the power that they have and that it’s not becuae of how pretty or skinny they are, its because of their knowledge and skills and personality and what makes them special and unique.

The video game industry is an international cash cow, which after seeing this video seems to have no limits on what they can simulate in the virtual world. From personal experience I have seen video games being made about topics such as sports, war, car races, car jacking ect… but nothing ever as scary as rape. In this article they showed us various video games where the object of the game was to stalk and rape the young girls walking down the street, and my first reaction to this was utter shock. The things that the player does to the characters in the game were even too violent and graphic to be shown on the news. I cant believe that people actually play such sick games in order to feel a sense of power. These games promote sexual violence and torture and are extremely insulting to women. Women’s rights groups have been all over this trying to end the selling to games such as these. They are globally available and should most definitely be stopped. After I thought about it a little more, however, how are these rape games any different then the video games where you have to kill hookers or shoot civilians. Though equally unacceptable, those are common themes in games today such as grand theft auto. It is easy, in fact popular to find games, which are extremely violent. However, they are just games. I don’t think that we should tell people that they cant play these games on the off chance that someone might get an idea and begin to perform the actions from the game in real life. That is why although I was extremely disturbed by the rape video game, I don’t think that it should be banned unless the video game industry is banning all criminal-type video games. Rape is just as awful as murder so therefore they all shouldn’t be allowed to be played as part of a game.

I thought that this post was extremely insightful. This man who is confined to an 8 by 8 cell sounds as if he has figured out the meaning to life in such a way that he is more free then most of the people that I know. He stated that freedom, to him, is “the way I view the world and my place in it, the way I exist with those around me. An emotional, mental, spiritual (if not physical) definition of freedom as an individual.” I think that that is a beautiful way to say it. He has figured out a way to control his beliefs and ideas to make it so he is being the best that he can be. There are plenty of people out there who feel trapped under “the man” people who go to a job that they hate every day, to make money for a superficial world in which they don’t believe. But this lifer has discovered that life and freedom is worth so much more then that. It is about keeping hope alive, which is how he says he has gotten through his first 24 years in jail. He is finding his own freedom by helping others and doing the best he can to better himself. There are even people here at Penn State who don’t feel completely free. We are at a school where the amount of opportunities is endless and I can personally say that I don’t feel free in my decisions at all. My parents who are paying for my tuition want me to be a business major, so that is what I am doing. I was never free to pick my major, because that is what they felt was best so therefore I have to do it. Now I’m not saying I feel like a prisoner at my own school, but I think that this man has manipulated his thinking to feel that he is free as long as he is proud of his decisions in helping others and I am impressed that he can do that. He ends by saying, “True freedom is not just of the body to move, but of the heart to feel, the mind to think, and the soul to shine.” and I think that more people should think and feel this way, it shouldn’t take confinement to realize how to be truly free.

When I saw the title of this post it was immediately interested in what the article had to say. After reading it and watching the video, I definitely agree with what it said. People really don’t understand the significance of using the “R” word and how hurtful it can be. It was one of those things that you read it and go “Oh yeah, that’s so true” but unfortunately, its not something people put much thought into unless the topic is given to them. I think that people should stop using the “R” word because it is offensive to use in a derogatory manor. I thought it was a great thing and very inspirational that this man is trying to put an end to it and even making a day to stop the word. I think the problem with the “R” word is that people don’t realize how hurtful they are being because it has become such a normal part of daily language. When people are frustrated with someone or something they do tend to call it retarded, and that is an awful way to put it. I do however; think that there is hope for the “R” word to be stopped. A few years back it was extremely common for people to call something un-cool or weird or annoying, “Gay”. Thankfully, the movement to stop that has been a strong one and it has become far less common for people to say that. With this in mind I really think that the movement to stop the use of the “R” will work. I think this because it is the type of thing that people don’t realize that they are offending others, so once they see the impact this word is having the will be happy to stop it. I think that because this work offends to many people, it is important to make the change and stop using it in a derogatory way. I know that from now on I will make it a point not to slip and use this word as well as when I hear someone say it to correct them and just be like, no that’s not retarded, and its offensive to say that it is.

More often then not we fear things that are very uncommon. We fear things such as natural disasters, kidnappings, rape etc… The thing is though, that these things that we fear are very unlikely to occur. People who study risk say that children if lost should talk to strangers to help them find their home, because 99.99% of people are good to children and will help them. Usually on the news, however, we will hear of the few uncommon scary incidents such as this one. In this video a man tried to kidnap a 4-year-old child in the middle of the afternoon with many people around. The nanny was able to fight him off and he just kept on walking. Since the man got away, the news report said that he will most likely try to kidnap someone else and that we need to assume that he is going to. Though this I the precautionary way to live, it isn’t good for anyone to live in fear. The odds of a child getting kidnapped in broad daylight are so slim that people really shouldn’t worry as much as they do that it is going to occur. The woman who got interviewed during the news report said that she is already making changes and told her son that he always needs to be holding her hand and cannot run in front of her so she can always protect him. Yes it is a good idea to take precautions, but I don’t think that it is necessary to always have your guard up when events such as this one are so rare. When I was younger I was only allowed to walk to school with a friend, never alone. I live less then a block from my elementary school, if my mom stood on the corner of my street she would be able to watch me walk there, but she still would never allow me to do it alone. This is silly because as we talked about in class the rate of child kidnappings have not increased in recent years at all. However, the amount of children who walk to school as drastically decreased. We live in a society where people are always scared because of what they see in the media when in reality it isn’t necessary to be. Though scary and bad things can definitely happen as we need to teach our children what to do in case of an emergency or something occurring, we shouldn’t try and shield them from the realities of the world because we are scared or nervous.

In this article they are discussing the practice of polyandry and how it is common in the Himalayas. Polyandry is when one woman has several husbands and in this culture it has been working well. The people who use it are very happy with it because it benefits them both financially and socially. The article talks about a woman who has three husbands, all brothers, and it works for them. The men all contribute both domestically and financially and therefore the family is able to survive. The land in the area is scarce and if a family needed to divide it up amongst their sons then no one would be able to survive, but because all of the brothers are married to the same woman, they can do well. No one makes their own decision about marriage it is decided with the whole family. It is also a form of birth control. A wife can only get pregnant so often no matter how many husbands she has because they wouldn’t be able to afford too many children. I personally think that this practice is completely outdated and that it will soon be ended. The people are becoming more and more educated and realizing that they can make money other ways then having a family farm go to one woman. Towards the end of the movie they began saying how the people were increasing their use in technology and therefore they culture may become more industrialized. The woman didn’t seem to complain, and the men say that as long as the women keep them on a schedule sexually they are happy too because they are splitting the work. This video was defiantly shocking because especially in American we are used to having a man with more then one wife, not vice-versa. Because they have been using this practice as a way to benefit them both financially and domestically, it really isn’t disgusting. Hopefully the people in the Himalayas will soon be able to stop this practice, but for now what they are doing I don’t think is a bad thing because it seems to work for them, and the people in the video seemed very happy.

Although this video is funny because the people are so quickly to conform to the social norm although it is different from what they are used to, it almost is sad. It’s sad how easily people are swayed to do something that they don’t want to do just because of peer pressure. Although we have been trained since we were little to face outward while in an elevator, simple because some of the men were facing inward, the subject also decided to face inward. This is a metaphor for larger issues in our society. People are afraid to go against mainstream culture. People are more likely to stick with what a larger group is doing then to stick with what they believe in. It is what causes a lack of individuality in our world and people have the mentality that unique individuals are weird or lesser then them, just because they do not conform to the norms in society. Someone who sticks to their beliefs rather then conforming should be applauded not be considered the black sheep. In an instance that can be relevant to Penn State is Greek life. Having people be scared to go against the norm can cause problems for instances such as hazing in sororities and fraternities. When a group of people are hazing it is hard for someone to go against the norm and to stop it. Thankfully there have been recent actions taken against hazing in our school. Group conformity though is a problem. It is something that everyone does because people feel awkward going against what they find socially acceptable. When noone is wearing a fat, the man felt awkward wearing his hat. He shouldn’t have, it is perfectly acceptable behavior to wear your hat in an elevator, but because all the other men took it off, he felt the need to also.