No Fear

Review n 3
Name: Mauricio Catena
Article: Bullying Fear Can Harm Children
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Author: Aislinn Simpson
Date of Publication: October 29th ,2007
Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/29/nchild129.xml

Tim Gill, a former government adviser who has been investigating children behaviour,
claims that normal rough and violence of childhood which is sometimes interpreted as bullying is important for children to build up their character and to deal with difficult social situations. In his book, No Fear: Growing up in a risk averse society, he accepts that it is important to protect kids from sexual predators, kidnapping and peers violence, but we have to do it without overprotecting them.

Nowadays, parents tend to wrap their children in a cotton wool, and this exaggerated behaviour can damage the child´s normal encounter with reality and how to deal with their own problems. This overprotection can build anxiety disorders in the child, apart form damaging the social interaction with their peers and other members of the community.

The author claims that the vast amount of money spent by the government in vetting child abusers could have been invested in training and raising awareness since most kids are abused by their family members. He also thinks that nowadays children are no more in danger than they were 20 years ago, and that there is a culture of risk averse in society. Maybe the only way to solve this problem is to build a child-friendly society, where communities take care of each other and the government should encourage people to make this happen. According to him, it is true that we as adults have the responsibility to take care of our children, but a risk averse behaviour is not the solution to this problem.

In my opinion, I think that nowadays there is a real increase in violence between young people; just look at the phenomenon of school shooting in several institutions all over the world, and also the way kids shoot themselves fighting or bullying their peers. It is reasonable to think that overprotection is bad for kids, but we have to find a way to protect them without affecting their freedom. It is true that bullying is not the only danger at which our children are exposed to in the present, and it would be very positive to raise awareness about other matters such as sexual abuse and kidnapping.

Africa Connected

Review n 2
Name: Mauricio Catena
Article: Africa Waiting For Net Revolution
Source: BBC News
Author: Darren Waters
Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7063682.stm

Nowadays, only a few percentage of the population in Africa use the Internet, and the broadband penetration is below 1%. These were some of the topics dealt at the Connect Africa meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. This conference took place in Africa in order to solve these problems and to try to get financial support to improve technology and telecommunications in the continent.
The head of the International Telecommunication Union, Dr Hamadoun Toure, called for “immediate action” and is rather optimistic about the future:” "If you have just 1% of broadband access today you have 99% of opportunity.The good news is that Africa has had the highest growth in mobile use globally - twice the global average over the past three years. For the first time economic indicators are positive from Africa."
In this continent, high-speed access to the Internet is rare and this situation prevents Africa from being part of the rest of the world. This problem also affects education and telecomunications, as the institutions cannot update the technological devices they have. The main problem in Africa is the lack of interconnectivity: more of the 70% of internet traffic within Africa is routed outside the continent, increasing the costs for business and consumers. According to Dr Toure, the solution is to attract the private sector investment so it can help the continent´s economy to grow.
In Toure´s words” The heads of state present will give assurances to the private sector on the availability of competition and the creation of a proper regulatory environment for them in which to evolve," he said. "The private sector from outside Africa and inside will make fruitful partnerships." "Africa has to create the opportunities; Africa doesn't need charity”. "We need to make sure we have a good environment that will attract private sector investment. There's nothing wrong with making profits in Africa”.
It is believed that Africa will achieve its goal by 2015, when more people will have access to the Net and much more money will be invested in telecommunications and technology. Up to now, more than $ 8bn was invested in telecommunication infrastructure across the continent in 2005. We hope that people from this continent will have the chance to improve their economy and be part of the world.

HELP, I NEED SOMEBODY, HELP

The title of one of The Beatles hits pictures exactly what most of our teenagers and children are shouting for: HELP. As I was reading the newspaper this morning, a sad artcle on Nueva magazine caught my eye. This article said that 51% of children between the age of 11- 14 were already drinking alcohol. And the percentage rises in adolescents. According to Alicia Belmonte, IPLAS' director, nobody can sell alcoholic drinks to minors. But it seems that not all of the shop owners respect the law.

But the problem is that drinking beers and other alcoholic substances is not as bad as consuming marihuana. So if we see teenagers drinking we will not tell them this is harmful for them. Therefore, this is a beleif we must change. Smoking, drinking is as dangerous as drug consumption. In fact, most of car accidents, are caused by excessive amount of alcohol.

There are several reasons WHY teenagers drink alcohol: Self-gratification, pressure form their peers, psycho-dynamic relief. Therefore, young alcoholics need a great deal of help to overcome this problem. In this sense, parents must work in unison with doctors and shrinks in order to save their sons and daughters. Otherwise, they will be in a no way out road.

In Tucuman, there is a worse problem. Dancing clubs and discos close at 4.30 at night. But teenagers do not go back home. They stay at somebody's house and drink there until they are no longer masters of their will. Consequently, I shall repeat my idea: Parents take care of your children, see where they are going. Do not ask WHY my son or daughter drinks alcohol. Just do something about it.

Hopefully, adults will re-gain consiousness about this problem and will try to tackle this problem. Until then, youth will be killed by vicious. Please, let's do something!

Source:

• http://www.contexto.com.ar/nota.


• http://www.wcg.org/lit/booklets/alcohol/teenagers.

The End Of The Record Industry?

Review n1
Name: Mauricio Catena
Articles: “Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want” by Josh Tyrangiel, October 1st, 2007, Time.com; “Radical Remix” by Josh Tyrangiel, October 3rd ,2007, Time.com. Link: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1666973,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1668161,00.html?iid=sphere-inline-sidebar


The world of Rock, and the record industry in particular, were shocked some weeks ago by the news that Radiohead, the English Alternative Rock band, was going to release their most anticipated new album without a record label, through the Internet and with no suggested price. The announcement was posted by the guitarist Jonny Greenwood in the band´s blog Dead Air Space. Their contract with EMI/Capitol expired in 2003 after their sixth album, Hail to the Thief was released. According to the members of the band, the way in which their new album In Rainbows is released is in part an experiment; it is exciting for them to know how much music costs for people.

Buying the record is rather simple; people enter to www.radiohead.com , download the record and pay what they want for the album, and it´s perfectly acceptable to pay nothing at all. Everthough Radiohead´s strategy is a risky one, they are going to release a “tangible” version of the album in the traditional way, but this time it will be a box-set that will include an extra album, two vynils of the record and extra material such as a booklet and pictures.

Record industry executives are stunned by the band´s choice of commercializing their music on their own without the support of a record label. They claim that this could the beginning of a new era concerning the way music is sold. However, young bands won´t get benefit from this action because they need the support of a record label to get radio play and placements in record stores. Important and recognized bands should pay attention to this experiment; nowadays there is a decline in the sale of CDs, and artists get most of their income from touring. Apart from preventing record piracy, musician are the true owners of their music and they are free to sell it to the audience without the need of any intermediary. Record labels can be useful to the artists to get them live performances and publishing, so in a way they are not so prejudiced by the way the bussiness is done.

However, most of the consumers prefer one-stop shopping for their music, and a wise thing for the major labels to do is to help to create an ultimate digital-distribution site, where each band can sell their records at the price they want. The existing sites for purchasing music in digital format, such as iTunes, dislike record labels because of their insistence on controlling the prices.

Is it going to be the end of the record industry? We don´t know by now, but we have to be sure that the changes are coming.

I am creating artificial life, declare US gene pioneer

Yarek Waszul Source: www. The economist.com

The first synthetic chromosome has been built out of laboratory chemicals, it can be concidered the first new artificial life form on Earth. This announcement will provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species, and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming. Craig Vender, an American DNA researcher involved in deciphering the human genetic code, is the leader of a team of 20 top scientists involved in this creation.

The synthetic chromosome is 381 genes long and contains 580.000 base pairs of genetic code. The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, christened Mycoplasma laboratorium has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition. It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and become a new life form.

Some people believe Mr Vender has created a chassis on which almost anything could be built, from new drugs for the treatment of multiple diseases to bio-weapons that could be used as a threat to humanity. Although I agree with this belief, I think that carefully controlled this improvement can be a great contribution to humanity instead than a threat. In my opinion the threat in fact is the manipulation that corrupted powers could make of it.

Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán - Review nº 2
Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Marital Spats, Taken to heart

Nola Lopez, link: http://www.nytimes.com/


As all married couples know marital spats are an inevitable part of married life, but recient studies published in the New York Times newspaper, showed that the way you fight with your spouse can affect your health.
During a 10-year study period of nearly 4.000 men and women in the US, women who did not speak their minds during a fight with their husbands were four times more likely to die. While men keeping quite in those fights did not have any measurable effect on health.
The tendency to bottle up feelings during a fight is know as self-silencing. It has been linked to numerous psychological and physical health risks, such as depression, eating desorders and heart disease.
Other study involving 150 couples in their 60s, that had been married for more than 30 years and had no signs of heart disease, gave as a result that the emotional tone spouses take during a discussion can take a toll on health. For women, whether a husband`s arguing style was warm of hostile had the biggest effect on their heart health. But the level of warmth or hostility had no effect on a man`s heart health. For a man, heart risk increased if disagreements with his wife involved a battle for control.
As a married woman I know that disagreements in marriage are inevitable. So that I share psychology professor, Dr Timothy Smith`s words about the best way of dealing with them. It is, “to do it in a way that gets your concerns addressed without doing damage at the same time”. But there is an important obstacle that should be concidered during a marital spat. To maintain such behaviour involves certain leve of self-control that is not an easy job to do for many couples.


Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán - Review 1
Source: www.nytimes.com

DREAMS, LITTLE DREAMS

It has been proved that all human beings have dreams while they are at rest. It is amazing to see how many of them can actually re-tell what they have dreamt so accuratelly as if it were something that actually happened. The problem arises when these dreams are not only happy illusions but they become nightmares.

The word nightmare has been defined as bad dreams that wake you up. Researches say that nightmares and dreadful dreams offer potentially information about the larger mystery of why we dream in the first place, how our dreaming and waking lives may intersect and cross-infect each other, and, how we manage to construct a virtual reality in our skull.

One of the reasons why bad dreams can offer an insight into the skeleton of dreams is that most of our dreams are bad.
Survey and diary studies have shown that nightmare frequency varies by age and sex. Preschoolers are relatively immune to this phenomena, but not so their elder siblings. Roughly 25 percent of children ages 5 to 12 report being awakened by bad dreams at least once a week.

The content of nightmares also changes over time and across cultures.
Based on my personal experience, I have never gone through this kind of nightmares that would prevent me from sleeping. I feel I do not dream much. So I guess I tend to forget all my dreams.

All in all, having nightmares at night also causes health problems due to the fact that you cannot rest as much as it is requiered in order to re-gain strenght and put your body at some rest.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/science/

Date: October 23rd, 2007.

Article's Title: Basics: In The Dreamscape of Nightmares, Clues to Why we dream At All.

MORE THAN WORDS

If you thought you knew most of the languages around the world, you might be mistaken. A new language has been discovered in the northern part of Colombia. It is called Palenquero. The village, where this language is spoken, is known as Palenque. It was founded by fugitive slaves from Africa.

This language is only spoken in this village and less than half of the community’s 3,000 residents actively speak Palenquero. It is thought to be the only Spanish-based Creole language in Latin America. But its grammar is so different that Spanish speakers can understand almost nothing of it. Its closest relative may be Papiamento, spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, which draws largely from Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, linguists say.

The colony of San Basilio de Palenque is said to have been founded

after revolts led by Benkos Biohó, a 17th-century African resistance leader who organized guerrilla attacks on the nearby port of Cartagena with fighters armed with stolen blunderbusses.

It is also important to say that Palenquero is the last remain of a Sanish-based lingua franca used by slaves in Latin America.

Nowadays the Palenque village is no longer isolated from the world because villagers have electric light, Internet connection in a schoolhouse, television and many other facilities.

On the other hand, Palenqueros, the community’s residents say the biggest threat to their language’s survival comes from direct contact with outsiders. Many here have had to venture to nearby banana plantations or cities for work, and then found themselves ostracized because of the way they spoke. One defender of Palenquero said: “We are the strongest of the strongest” . “No matter what happens, our language will live on within us.”

In my opinion, this languge will continue to be preserved by its natives because it is very difficult to understant unless you were born in the community. And these villagers are eagered to keep it in this way.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/world/americas

Date: October 18th, 2007.

Title: A Language, Not Quite Spanish, With African Echoes.

Review 1: Restorative Justice vs. Capital Punishment

To understand the debate over Capital Punishment, it is necessary to identify the purpose of The Criminal Justice System. Capital Punishment seems to answers to the demands of society: to punish those who commit crimes and to reduce violence overall. But the question of capital punishment is, if it is regurlarly and fairly applied.
Many people in the actual Us society demand vengeance and retribution for violent criminal conduct. Retribute Justice means that the criminal must be made to pay for the crime, by a crude mathematics that demands the scale of justice be balanced. This type of justice is fueled by hatred and satisfied only with full and complete revenge. The more cruel, the more satisfying.
On the other hand, Retribute Justice has a bad history, as it has historically been used to enforce a class society by oppresing the poor and protecting the rich. It has been used to impose racism by applying the law in an unfairly way upon African-American citizens. In this way, the prision system has been linked to a 20th century form of slavery.
Many people argue that Capital Punishment is a deterrent to murder. And the worth of Death Penalty as a deterrent to crimes have ocassioned a great deal of debate. But the results simply have been incoclusive. This may be because whatever deterrence factor exists for Capital Punishment probably exists almost equally for Life Imprisionment. A far grater deterrent than either, would be, more efficient police investigation. An average of twenty-two thousand murders and non-negligent manslaughters are comitted anually in the US but only two thirds, of fifteen thousand suspects, are arrested.
The reality is that severe punishment is not working. Kids and petty offenders under the current system become hardened, violent and persistent criminals. Many who seek to eliminate the culture of violence assert that Capital Punishment actually exacerbates the level and intensity of violence in the community.
To cope with this situation, some people are promoting a Restorative kind of justice which offers a nonviolent response to the violence done. The focus of it, is the separation of the violent person from the society. With a peaceful attitude and a nonvegeful response, the cycle of violence can be broken. In order to foster a less violent society, the treatment of the offender should be as human and nonviolent as posible. Rehabilitation of the offender ought to be a necessary condition of parole. Life Imprisionment without the possibility of a parole ought to be the alternative to Capital Punishment.
In my personal opinion, Restorative justice seeks to eliminate the culture of violence and replace it with a culture of caring. We must not allow our hearts to be fill with hatred, anger, rage and the desire of revemge when we confront an act of violence. Restorative justive does not seek forgiveness for those who commit a crime. But it asks us to protect ourselves from the feeling of violence.

Gabriela Garcia Fernandez

Article's Title: Capital Punishment and Violence
Source: http://www.findarticles.com
Date of Publication: February 2004
Author: Robert Grant.

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