This video starts very slowly, but the amount of explosions steadily increases. It gets to the point where you can’t even read what the battles were over or were called. When WWII was going on the explosions were huge and very frequent. In comparison, the explosions for The American Revolution and the Civil War were relatively small. One of the things this video made me aware of was that the America’s have not have many home battles. Especially for America it seems like almost all of the military deaths have been overseas, which is a little odd. The other thing this video made me aware of was where most of the battles actually occurred. Central Europe (like France and Germany) seems to be were probably 80% of the deaths from battle have occurred. If wars and battles occur because of arguments and needs for resources, then it would seem logical that these countries are rich in resources. Back when acquiring natural gases wasn’t an issue these regions could have been rich in food or goods. If the battles were not due to resources then they could have had something to do with malevolent leaders. WWII occurred in Germany because of dictatorial leader Adolf Hitler. These days a lot of conflicts seem to occur over oil and gases. An example of this is they current war, the Iraqi War. How war started seemed to be the progression of European empires, such as the Romans. They could have been fighting over power, resources, or land. As more people began populating the land and the population spread out to the rest of earth power and land possession were still a very common thing to fight over. Another issue that started many wars or battles during any of these 1000 years could be differences in religion. Religion had always been an issue, and will most likely continue to be an issue. A final thing I know could be causation of war is money. Everyone wants more money, and when a country surrenders it means the victorious country could ask for war reparations. Wars are expensive, and any reparations are greatly appreciated. As our society continues to progress and resources become more scarce there will become more and more battles. Also as our military weapons of mass destruction become more and more accurate and destructive more people will die. We are in a never ending incline of war deaths.

As someone who really doesn’t pay attention to the current war so much, I was surprised to know that more soldiers commit suicide then actually die in battle. I figured many did commit suicide because it is so difficult to live a normal life after everything they have seen in their deployments. After watching the video in class today it makes even more sense. The Armed Forces men and women are believed and supposed to be strong and fearless people. Any sign of weakness means failure. Soldiers who want to get help for their PTSD or any other fears they are having will be quickly judged and ridiculed. I think it is ridiculous that other soldiers judge them so much for this. The story about the soldier who killed an innocent civilian woman due to fear of her being a suicide bomber was very interesting. When he came back his family during his break they could tell that there was something going on with his mental health, however, they were told by the military that they shouldn’t really pry him too much about it because he would already be going through a whirlwind of emotions. In my opinion that was probably the worst thing they could have told them to do. Without his families support he slowly slipped into bad actions for his general health and well being. If his family and fiance would have confronted him about this right away and made him get help right when they noticed how serious this actually was, he could have had help handling it. I have a feeling a lot of the suicides committed by soldiers are very similar to this. War, death, and battle are a lot to deal with. One day you could lose your best friend or kill someone you never meant to kill.
In 10th grade we were required to interview a war veteran and have him describe everything that happened to them during and after the war. The man I interviewed was in World War II. He invaded Omaha Beach on D-Day and was a member of the Navy. I remember him describing the experiences of losing his best friend during combat that day. He said the effects of losing friends, war in general, killing other soldiers, and even getting injured himself mainly affected him once he was home. He has two purple hearts and spent many years in combat. He luckily didn’t seem to have PTSD (or shell-shock, which is what it was called then) but he did tell me about how sometimes he’d wake up from a nightmare about the war. Even certain sounds or scents frightened him and would bring back vivid memories. Our one on one talk is easily relateable to the video we watched. Stress from war has been going on for years and it will likely continue for a very long time.

The public's reaction to this video is not a surprise to me. People and families who watch the news always seem to be more afraid of the world than people who just live their lives. All the news does is make a big deal out of all the bad things that are going on in our country. No one reports how child abduction has decreased over the years, all that is talked about is when an abduction, or even like in the video a near abduction does occur. If a child gets lost and cannot find his way home he remembers how his mother has drilled into his brain not to talk to strangers, when in reality, asking a stranger to help them find their way home is the best option to get to their destination. If there’s a 99.99% chance that stranger will get them home then they need to ask the first person they see. The longer they wait, the more likely it is that someone will come along, see the lonely child, and abduct them because it will be so simple to do. News needs to start spreading the actual facts. They frighten parents so much that children are never left alone. One statistic that proves this is the amount of kids walking to school now versus a few decades ago. I agree. There are times when kids should be given more freedom or less freedom but that all depends on where they live. Someone who lives in the country may walk on deserted roads where no one drives by them, but a child walking through the city could walk past hundreds of people. Who is more in danger? Parents don’t take anything into account, because obviously no one wants to lose their child. This bigger general fear of life could also be based on the fact that news is easier obtainable and very easily spread. News shapes parents ideals and their invisible strings of dangerous society to make them skeptical and cautious. If we stopped broadcasting all of the bad news and started putting out some more good news, the would could be a very different place.

My first reaction of this topic was, “why is this beneficial?” After viewing the video I realized I was just experiencing a sort of culture shock and was oblivious to the ways that other regions live their lives. Multiple husbands in this culture means that there are multiple men to work the land that belongs to the family. This video reminds me of the show “Sister Wives”. The fact that this one man was married to three different sisters makes everyone wonder how things like sex and children work. Later in the series he takes another wife and all of his current wives are very confused. They feel unwanted and didn’t react very well to the new addition to the family. When this show came out it was so controversial because many Americans are afraid of change and reacted by means of rebellion. We are all so afraid of anything different and that will never change. Last week I wrote about why we are afraid to travel and this weeks reasoning over why we are so afraid of polygamy is pretty much the same reason. When we started getting headlines about what was happening to Chinese babies we all again experienced a culture shock. No one in America can imagine killing babies due to population increase, because it’s not our problem. No one understands why people are multiple husbands/wives or killing female babies because it is simply something Christian Americans do not do. The fact that there are now no Chinese women to marry is something obvious that they should have seen coming but failed to. Instead of making everyone only have one male child they should have just put the limit of children a couple could have be two. If a couple has two children they are essentially replacing themselves. This would have caused a population decrease about as effectively as the rule of one male child yet wouldn’t have caused the lack of eligible women to marry later in life. Americans shouldn’t be afraid and judge other cultures. What works for us does not necessarily mean that it works for everyone else and everyone has a hard time realizing that. This is why we don’t travel abroad, why we view Chinese baby rules as completely ridiculous, and why we see everyone else’s culture as wrong and why we try to give them advice.

The article “Why more Americans don’t travel abroad” was very interesting. It was something I had never really thought about before and I wasn’t originally sure if they would have proof that this was correct. However reading through the article confirmed to me that this is actually happening in America and I was surprised. The fact that only 3¬0% of Americans have passports is astounding. I have had a passport for 6 years now, and I have used it 13 times since then. My family is very middle class, but whenever possible we take a vacation together. I have been on at least two vacations every year since I was born. Whether that was to Washington D.C. to visit family, or to a beach in Delaware or Maryland we always went somewhere. My entire family vacations a lot and they always have. Three years ago I went on a 35 day cruise to Europe, Canada, and Iceland. I was nervous at first about the natives in other countries being rude or taking advantage of me being only 16 and stealing my personal belongings. Very quickly I realized how silly these thoughts were. Every port I went to on that cruise was beautiful and the people were very kind. In America many people talk about how the French are very rude and how they will never visit there. This is a ridiculous assumption. If you speak just a little French to someone who works in a restaurant or anywhere else they immediate are there to serve you because they are impressed when people try and learn about the way they live. A lot of my friends don’t go places because their parents also don’t want to. One of my friends has only gone to one place every year. She has never been anywhere but the Jersey Shore. When I asked her why this was, she told me that her parents don’t like planes or long car rides. This is the comfort mentality that so many Americans have. So many people believe we are a super power country that has everything it could ever need and there is no reason to go and visit another place. What people don’t understand is that while America may have a lot (like mentioned in the article) what is most interesting about travel is the culture of other countries. It is so interesting how they live their lives so similarly, yet so differently than we do. Most people don’t care how other cultures live because we aren’t taught anything about them in school unless you take a language class. We also aren’t taught enough languages in school they teachers not start early enough. A lot of European kids on my cruise knew four or five languages. My cruise gave me confidence to go out and explore the world and I know I will do a lot more exploring in my life to come.

When first viewing this video I laughed and thought “Wow, the candid guys in this are so dumb!” but after thinking about it thoroughly I realized that if I was in the situation I would probably do the same thing they did. Since this video is clearly from a while ago I decided to enroll my friends into helping me conduct a very similar experiment on unsuspecting people in my dorm building. We had four people and we all faced the back of the elevator while the candid person stood in the back facing the doors. Most people awkwardly looked at us for a couple of seconds then decided that they would conform and faced the back wall of the elevator. To a couple of people we turned different directions while inside the elevator and every single time they copied us. To kids who had headphones in, we also had them in, and simultaneously we removed our headphones from our ears, waited a couple seconds, then put them back in. We also pulled our iPods out and skipped some songs, then put them back into our pockets. Anything we did, the other kids in the elevator copied within a few seconds of us all doing this. Doing this experiment made everything from our class discussion on group think today make total sense. Most people believe and say they wouldn’t conform to something as stupid as turning in an elevator or messing with your music, but once placed into the actual situation everything changes. The person that isn’t the same feels awkward until they conform to whatever the current situation is. It is something that isn’t really “learned” it seems more of a concept that everyone automatically has built into their minds and reactions. Everyone wants to be well liked, and one of the easiest ways people can make this happen is to conform to a general group and go with the flow. Group think can be applied to something as simple as turning in an elevator, or something more complex, like fashion and hair styles. The people that stand out from the trends are the people that aren’t following the group think and are choosing to be individuals; even if that means that other people think that they are weird. Does something like individuality even exist, or are the invisible strings that push us into our destined direction pulling us away from our own individuality and confining us to conformity and similarity?

When I first saw the title of this article I immediately thought, well this school must be huge if that many girls are pregnant but when I heard that there were only 800 kids in the whole high school I was appalled. To think that 11% of the entire school which of course consists of boys has or is going to have a baby seems incredible until they throw in the fact that nearly 100% of these students meet the requirements for reduced/free lunch. This Memphis school most likely serves kids from the projects and other very low income homes. I bet that a lot of the kids that go to this school are children of teenage parents. A lot of times pregnant teens follow in the footsteps of their mothers, because it is hard to get out of what looks like the inevitable path of life. It would be interesting to know the percentage of different types race the girls in this school are. In 12th grade I did a project about teen girls and pregnancy and I found that Hispanic and black teens are much more likely to get pregnant at a young age then white teens are. For example, my school of about 95% Caucasians and maybe 8% of kids qualify had maybe 5 pregnant girls there in my entire high school career. Our school also had over 2000 students in it. Along with parents, upbringing, and race another factor that could have these kids at a high pregnancy rate could be the sex education the school has to offer. The article about Sex Education made clear that this education in schools is not mandatory so this school may not have the knowledge to have safe sex. Without this sex education they may not know about the use of condoms and birth control, which is why they get pregnant at such young ages. I do not believe this was like the pregnancy pact, and they did not all choose to be pregnant at once. This high amount of pregnancy has to do with what I talked about above. They arent exercising their freedom

Before viewing this video I had always viewed the toddler pageant industry as stupid an unnecessary. The children on the TLC show “Toddlers and Tiaras” never seemed to be happy and almost always threw temper tantrums. They seem over privileged and always acted like divas towards every adult they came across. I agree with the woman in the video, it really seems like the moms are living out their childhood dreams through their young daughters by dolling them up to make them look five to ten years older than they actually are. Most likely the kids weren’t given an option whether they wanted to participate in pageants or not. The pageant mom in the video says that if her daughter told her that she didn’t want to do pageants anymore that she would allow her to quit, but I believe the kids get so used to being in pageants that they don’t even know how they feel about it, it is just something normal to do every once in a while. I don’t believe that the mothers are “forcing” them to do pageants but there is definitely some invisible force that they use to keep their kids wanting to stay in it to please their parents. The question above about how they are no different than adult beauty pageant contestants is something that can be agreed or disagreed with. Agreeing to this question is obvious, but disagreeing isn’t as much so. One reason I disagree is that with younger girls, all they are gaining by winning a pageant is money and a crown. By winning something like “Miss America” you gain so much more. Yes you win money and a crown, but you earn respect and sometimes scholarship money. Miss America also travels the world and volunteers for random organizations that benefit society. One aspect I had never considered about beauty pageants was what the mom pointed out. She said it is really no more different than girls getting dressed up for dance recitals. As a former dancer (beginning at age 3) this had never crossed my mind, and when it did all I could think of was my mom curling my hair and putting on my makeup as a prepared for a 3 minute performance on the stage. She made a great point with that and it actually made me reconsider beauty pageants. The other great point she made was with fathers and their sons playing football. I have seen my dad stand on the sidelines of my brothers’ baseball and soccer games since the age of four encouraging and pushing him to be the best he could possibly be. It is eerily similar to these pageant moms. While overall I still do not find toddler beauty pageants necessary and appropriate, this mom made some very good counter attacks.

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