Marijuana: Will You Take the Risk?

  
Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug today, except for two states, where it is completely legal.  The number of states in America that have legalized marijuana for medical uses is 21. Whereas Washington and Colorado are the only two states that have legalized the recreational use of Marijuana. Washington has not yet licensed recreational outlets but Colorado has.
   On January 1st this year, Colorado became the first state in America history to allow the sale of recreational marijuana. Recreational meaning there are stores in Colorado where you can just walk in and buy weed, just like alcohol or Tobacco.  People who are older than 21 with a Colorado ID can buy up to an ounce at licensed stores. You can read more about Colorado’s recreational marijuana shops here. Although the buying age is restricted ,it is obvious that people under 21 can easily get in touch with marijuana from the people who bought marijuana at the recreational stores.
   Although marijuana is known to have been used for medical reasons, there are still arguments both for and against smoking weed. The high addictiveness of marijuana is becoming a major problem for teens in America. In this article, it is said that nearly 1 in every 10 teens have smoked weed at least 20 times or more in the past month. The high addiction is not the only problem, marijuana is also known that it might have long term effects that could be quite harmful to the human brain. You can read about the pros and cons of smoking weed here.Researchers state that more research is needed to completely determine marijuana’s benefits and it’s true long-term effects. This means that the long term effects of marijuana could be nothing or bad. People who smoke a descent amount of weed periodically could be completely safe or could have harmful effects to their brain when they get older. Personally I would not take the risk, but it seems like many people in America ignore the risk or they simply don't know the potential consequences. I think the latter is more common now days because I have heard many people say that smoking weed has zero risks. I have heard some people say it's even good for you. I don't know where people got these ideas but they obviously haven't researched enough because there are hundreds of articles out there debating about the pros and cons of smoking weed and frankly there is no right answer yet.
Do you think people who smoke marijuana don't know the possible long-term effects or they just don't care about them?

Prioritizing Visual Aspects

    When I was in New Orleans with my family the past week, I was surprised by the number of street performers I encountered, each one of them with different talents. One performance that I saw outside when I was in a restaurant particularly drew my attention, which was a man just standing with his dog laying on the ground. The dog was just laying on the ground, facing upward and was holding a bunch of dollar bills in his hand. Within in a couple minutes, there was a big crowd around the man and the dog. There was a different performance going on right by the man and the dog, which was a group of people playing jazz. The number of people watching this performance was considerably smaller than the number of people around the man and the dog. The man and the dog was probably there for  20 minutes and then left, whereas the musicians were still playing and they have already been playing for a long time too.
    I thought it was very ironic seeing this sight because the two performances obviously had different levels of effort and skills required but the one with significantly less effort was making much more money than the other one simply because it involved a cute animal that everyone liked. People decided to give their money to the man and the dog instead to the musicians simply because everyone love cute animals.
    I think this shows the basic thinking of the people in America which is that they get interested in the visual aspects of things more than anything else. The dog was more visually appealing than the musicians playing jazz. I think this thinking can be seen in various other situations. It can be connected to what we have been learning in class, the inequality of African Americans. The unequal treatment of African Americans because of the darkness of their skin could have been an extension of Americans' tendency to judge on the visual aspects.
    Do you think American people prioritize visual aspects more than other aspects?

Technologies: Can We Trust Them?

In the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", a super computer installed on a spaceship named HAL betrays the human crew ends up killing most of them. When it was asked before about its reliability, HAL said "The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error." I think what HAL said reflects what people believe today with technologies. We completely trust our technologies and can't imagine them making a mistake. I think this movie sends a subliminal message, which is to be aware of technologies in the future because becoming too dependent on them is dangerous.

The improving technologies are providing us with huge benefits but also with consequences. For example, many people who are addicted to smartphones become reluctant towards speaking to other people. Global security adviser, Marc Goodman gives a much more global and dangerous one in this article. He states that new technologies have "unintended consequences". Providing criminals and terrorists with new weapons is one of them. For example, in the attack on Mumbai, India, the terrorists used modern communication technologies to locate more people and killed them. The terrorists even used mobile devices to search backgrounds of their victims and they used these backgrounds to determine whether to kill them or not. As technologies improve, not only do they make our lives easier, but they also make terrorists and criminals easy to kill their victims.
Do you think technology is making us vulnerable?

Why play football?

Football is often considered a dangerous sport; injuries are very common in Football. Out of many injuries players can possibly get, head injuries are one of the most dangerous ones. Although head injuries are very dangerous, many players tough them out because they fear their injury might thwart their team's success. These false decisions that players make could sometimes lead to much bigger consequences.  Just 4 days ago, a high school football player died after he received a head injury. For a long time, companies have been inventing many things to prevent injuries and make football a more safer sport.
In this article, a major invention has proved its usefulness against head injuries. When a player takes a big hit to the head, this head impact sensor emits a yellow flickering light that indicates a possible head injury that the player could have suffered. Dr. Jeffrey Kutcher, director of the Michigan NeuroSport Program stated that "These technologies can be useful if used cautiously, as long as you don't overinterpret what they mean". He also said "It could be really dangerous to rely on this too much." I believe no matter how many more inventions come out in the future, football will never be a completely safe sport.  If players don't make right decisions, football could be a very dangerous, even deadly sport. Because of this reason, there are many parents who don't want their kids to be playing football. But football is still the number one sport in America. The main reason for its popularity is just many kids play football just for the fun of the sport. But I believe there are also many kids who get pressured from their peers, like their parents, into playing football. I think this is because there is a stereotype with football players that makes them an "American". Football was born in America, so someone becoming a football player makes society see him as patriotic.

Do you think football players are considered "American" by the society?

Smartphone Addictions

If someone pulled out a gun on a crowded train that you were on, will you notice? These people who were on the train where a 20-year-old San Francisco University student got shot did not. The shocking truth comes when we see the security camera footage. The killer  is seen multiple times with a handgun in view. He waved the gun a couple times and at one point even wiped his nose with the it. No one nearby had seemed to notice until the blast actually went off. Read the article here.

This article astonished me with the addiction so many people has with their smartphones. As the iphone and other smartphones are coming up with attracting new applications, and with the prices going down so that a lot more people could afford them, the number of people being addicted to smartphones are increasing. Everyday in New Trier, I see a huge number of people walking down the hallways and going down the stairways staring at their phones. This article states that 73% of people who has lost their phones feel panicked. People who are addicted to smartphones have very hard times overcoming as they suffer from anxiety when they lose their phone for just a couple minutes. I think smartphone addiction will be a much bigger problem in the future as smartphones distract so many people during process of doing things.

Do you think smartphone addiction is a problem? What do you think think people can do to stop the addiction?

Danger in exchange for convenience?

Austin Dawkins was faced with reckless conduct today after he accidentally set fire to his wife by turning on his lighter near his truck's gas while he was in the process of refueling. The gas station surveillance camera shows the burning flame shooting out from the nozzle and burning his Dawkin's wife right after Dawkins ignited it with his cigarette lighter. Read the article here.
Dawkins's wife's surprise must have been unimaginable but Dawkins's must have been as bad.  I confidently believe that it never crossed his mind when he woke up today that he would end up setting his wife on fire in a gas station. There was an another incident that also took place today where a man opened fired in an airport, killing one TSA officer and injuring many more. I also believe that no one at that airport thought an incident could ever happen at such place. I have always thought that airports were a safe place and same with gas stations. This made me reconsider the dangers that are hiding in our world. With everything in society being so highly-developed now days, our lives were made much easier, but those developments has also caused society to be a more dangerous place than it was before. Back when there were no airports or gas stations, life must have been very inconvenient but I think it was much more safer than it is now.  I think inventions that we use daily, inventions that we think is so safe, have the potentials to be fatally dangerous.  For example, cars are with a doubt, one of the greatest inventions that has made our lives so much more convenient but I can't imagine the number of deaths they have caused.
Do you think the developments in society has also made it more dangerous than before?

Why do we watch horror movies?

  As Halloween approaches, horror themes are inevitably seen more and more in everyday life. Houses will be decorated with spooky designs, and there will be horror movie marathons going on television. When I saw on TV the Friday the 13th marathon starting this weekend,  I began to wonder why is it that so many people likes watching horror movies. Horror movies range from blood splattering slasher films to silent chilling supernatural films. As a movie fan myself, I have watched many kinds of horror movies and I do enjoy watching them. In this article, it is said that some people watch it simply for the physiological ride and others watch to understand the archetypal fears, what the population fears as a whole.
I think the second reason given in the article, the archetypal fear, represents America in a way. As the article states, horror movies after 9/11, which affected the country as a whole, were mostly centered on the them of torture which could have meant for the audience to comprehend the incident. Another example, the article says, zombie movies might have gotten popular because of the spread of influenza. I think this theory makes sense because naturally we all want to be in a large group, so that we can feel safe, and fear is one medium that will have us connected because fear is shared as a common feeling by many people.
Why do you think people watch horror movies?