Sexual Stereotypes and Stereotyping :: Feminism Feminist Women Criticism

Sexual Stereotyping: False Preconceptions and False Conclusions in Blaming Technology       In an excerpt titled "The Feminist Face of Antitechnology" from his 1981 book Blaming Technology, Samuel C. Florman explains why he thinks so few educated women in modern society are engineers.   The excerpt was written shortly after he had visited an all-female liberal arts school, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, to convince a few young women to become engineers.   His mission failed and his essay makes clear why he had such trouble.       Florman has more than one idea as to why young, educated women shy away from engineering as a career option.   First, he notes that America has inherited much of its culture from England, where engineering has not been considered a high-class occupation.   This is apparently so because engineering did not fully separate from craftsmanship until the mid-nineteenth century.   Florman claims that most young, male engineers come from lower- and lower-middle-class families.   He also claims that most young women who are educated in math and science come from middle- and upper-class families.   For this reason, Florman explains that educated women generally see engineering as being below their social class, and therefore do not pursue it as an option.   He supports his position with a story about how Herbert Hoover, after a long conversation, told a woman that he was an engineer and how she responded,   "Why, I thought you were a gentleman!"1   Florman then turns to the fem inists and asks why they haven't taken the lead in changing this situation.         Florman's main argument against the feminist movement is that it is fueled by a greed for power.   He suggests that women, especially feminists, are attracted to perceivable power, or power which is obvious to the cultural eye.   They want to become doctors, lawyers, and politicians.   The desire for power is also intimately connected with social class, according to Florman.   He sees this as one of the major reasons as to why so few women seek out engineering: they see it as a career without power.   Florman sees women as being "a lot more interested in the privileges than in the responsibilities."   According to him, the "ultimate feminist dream will never be realized as long as women would rather supervise the world than help build it."   Until women strive to understand the technology around them, and help to create it, they will always suffer.

Family and the Polis Essays -- essays papers

Family and the Polis Family and the Polis: Two Very Different Ideals Sophocles wrote a play entitled Antigone. One of the main characters, Creon, is a king who is trying to rule in the best interests of his community. Aristophanes also wrote a play, Lysistrata, where his main character is trying to stop a war within her country, a war between Sparta and Athens. Lysistrata is the only one who succeeds. It is because she focuses on the family issues first. That is what is at the heart of what is best for all of the people of Greece. Antigone is about rights of family and the control of the polis, or the government. Antigone is a strong female character whose two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, were killed by each other in a battle for the throne and power of the city. Polyneices’ body was left unburied and no one was allowed to bury it. Antigone wanted to respect her brother so she tried to go and bury him. Creon, the new king, was her uncle and she was engaged to marry his son. Creon told her that her brother’s body must remain above ground because of the dishonor that he brought upon himself when he murdered his own brother in a battle for power and for the blood that he spilled of his own countrymen. He was a traitor. He turned on the city he once ruled and fought and killed the very brother that he shared blood with. By law his body was to remain above ground for the birds and the beasts to pluck apart. Creon commanded: â€Å"I here proclaim to the city that this man/ shall no one honor w ith a grave and none shall mourn†. Polyneices wasn’t going to be given honor when his life didn’t merit any. Creon saw Polyneices as an exile and a destroyer of the city. He came and attacked the very land that was his own and the... ...oney had been spent, too many people had died. To many things had been forgotten about for the mere reason of war The woman wanted their men home and rightly so. The killing needed to stop and the men needed to come home and run the cities and the land once more. She wanted things back the way that they used to be. Her plans were successful. The war was able to stopped and the needless killing ended. The men returned home to their wives and families were reunited. Lysistrata and Creon wanted to help their communities in different ways. Only Lysistrata was triumphant in her plan. She started with her own family and then moved beyond that for all the women and the whole of Greece. Creon was thinking big and acting small. He was focusing on community and the government or the polis first of all and in doing that, he lost what is the most important issue, family.

Assessment Tools for Visually Impaired

Assessment tools for Visually Impaired †¢ Using real objects rather than representative objects or pictures †¢ Addressing impact of child's experiences with the environment on performance Familiar vs. unfamiliar objects: If you use familiar objects, the child has had time to explore and develop concepts; unfamiliar objects may take the child more time to explore them. If a child only knows his objects, this may indicate lack of experience and under generalization of concepts. Familiar vs. nfamiliar people: A child who is blind may need time to warm up to an unfamiliar person. It is important to read the child and allow him to maintain contact with his parents and to allow him to initiate interactions. Familiar vs. unfamiliar location: A child who is visually impaired will need time to explore and familiarize himself to an unfamiliar area. He may act more reticent in an unfamiliar area. When assessing functional vision and mobility skills, it is important to assess in both a familiar and unfamiliar area if possible.Because a child does not have to rely on fine detail vision as much in a familiar area, you may get different visual responses in an unfamiliar area which could add to your understanding of the child's vision. †¢ Impact of expectations and opportunities child has had Familiar vs. new task: If you are testing a skill that is usually learned visually and the child has never been taught the skill, a test-teach-test model can help determine if child can learn task through manual demonstration. Analyzing the concept being tested and adapting to a child who is visually impaired or blind For example, the concept of object permanence looks at a child's visual attention, memory, persistence and organization of searching behaviors. For a totally blind child, this can be assessed by looking at how a child reacts to a dropped object, first allowing the object touch a part of his body and then taking the object further away from his body to assess s earching behaviors.Need to be aware of response behaviors that may be seen in young children who are blind. †¢ â€Å"Passive†, neutral facial expressions that may indicate that the child is listening attentively. †¢ Resistance to having hands directed to unknown objects; use of protective responses of pulling hands away, protective responses to unanticipated events. †¢ Visual responses: eccentric viewing, head tilt, holding objects close, closing eyes, etc. †¢ Gaze aversion to disengage or if objects are too close. Arousal issues: visually impaired may be in low arousal state due to lack of visual stimulus and low postural tone. †¢ Child may use â€Å"immature† patterns or repetitive patterns of object exploration such as repeated dropping for auditory feedback, tapping, mouthing. †¢ Child may be auditorily distracted by environmental noises. Need to assess â€Å"unique curricular areas† that are important to children who are visual ly impaired. †¢ Functional vision †¢ Sensory development †¢ Compensatory Skills (e. g. exploration and hand skills, Pre-braille; listening skills) †¢ Orientation ; Mobility Need to select assessment scales and strategies that allow for: †¢ Freedom of presentation and selection of materials †¢ Quality in additional to milestones †¢ Incidental and structured presentation Need to understand the implications of: †¢ Age at which visual loss occurred †¢ Level of functional vision †¢ Implications of the eye condition †¢ Presence of additional handicaps Need to be able to clearly describe the assessment process and implications to PARENTS.

NFL Concussions and Their Long-Term Effects Essay

On May 2, 2012, the National Football League lost one of its elite players to suicide: Junior Seau. Seau played for the Chargers, Dolphins, and the Patriots during his professional football career and was a 12-time Pro Bowler before retiring in 2009. Three years after his retirement however, Seau committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a gun. This greatly shocked the football world and its image of Junior Seau as a person, but it soon realized the cause for his action. Shortly after Seau’s death, researchers examined Seau’s brain and found that it contained a disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy which is formed by repeated blows to the head; a very common disease among former football players (Football Brains). The Seau family then filed a lawsuit against the NFL claiming that the league held back information from the players about the danger of continuous blows to the head (Seau’s Death on Brain Injuries). Since the formation of the National Football League in 1920, the popularity of the sport has grown tremendously over the years. It seems nowadays that more and more people are getting interested in the NFL, whether it is talking about their favorite team at work or at school or watching them play on game day. However, on the flip side of all the amazing catches and touchdowns, there is a dark side to the NFL known as the concussion problem. This problem has grown so much over the years that there have been more than 4200 lawsuits by former and current players against the NFL stating that the NFL has been trying to cover up the detrimental long term effects of concussions and also relied on NFL doctors to feed them the information they wanted to hear while rejecting the studies done by researches showing the long term effects concussions have on the brain (Junior Seau’s Death Keeps Spotlight on Brain Injuries). In order for the NFL to keep thriving the way it is right now, the league had to reject the information shown by researchers which showed the harmful effects of concussions in the long run and instead had to hire their â€Å"own† doctors to say that concussions are minor and cause no detrimental long run effects. I believe that repetitive concussions do cause  health problems in the future for NFL players and that the NFL covered up the truth about concussions. Being that I watch the NFL regularly, it seems like it is almost guaranteed that at least one or more players will experience a concussion during the game with all the physical contact taking place. Some of the concussions these players experience are obvious in that they are motionless on the ground and some are not so obvious in that they are still able to make it to the bench. According to Jennifer Car of BrainFacts.org, a concussion is caused when the head is struck violently which then leads to a brief disruption in brain activity. When the head is struck suddenly, the brain is set in motion and bangs the skull’s rough and ragged inside which causes the brain cells to stretch and sometimes even split (Mild Brain Injury and Concussion). Michael Collins, a clinical psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who specializes in sports-related concussions, states that â€Å"a concussion is basically an energy crisis to the brain cells† and he also states that â€Å"the brain has to work much harder to perform tasks† (Hard Knocks: The Science of Concussions). This disruption can cause an individual to experience a variety of different symptoms in the following minutes and hours. The range of symptoms includes the following: nausea, vomiting, brief loss of consciousness, and dizziness (Hard Knocks: The Science of Concussions). Later symptoms include: lightheadedness, depression, anxiety, ringing in the ears, constant migraine headaches, and poor concentration or attention (Mild Brain Injury and Concussion). The symptoms mentioned in the previous paragraph may last a couple days to a few weeks; at most a few months. Those who experience these types of symptoms usually receive a concussion maybe once or twice in their lifetimes. However, those professional athletes competing in sports with a good deal of physical contact are in harm’s way of experiencing multiple concussions during their career as an athlete. According to recent research, scientists have discovered a neurodegenerative disease also known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE (Hard Knocks: The Science of Concussions). This disease was found in the brains of former athletes who have died mainly boxers and football players (What is CTE?). These athletes were those who  have received continuous concussions or played in positions where they were vulnerable to experience a good amount of physical impact (Hard Knocks: The Science of Concussions). The repeated banging of the brain against the skull causes a gradual d egeneration of the brain tissue, and also the forming of an unusual protein known as tau (What is CTE?). These activities in the brain can take place months or even years after the last concussion or retirement from the sport. Some of the symptoms associated with CTE include: memory loss, confusion, depression, aggression, hindered judgment, and dementia (What is CTE?). There is definitely evidence of the symptoms of CTE among former NFL players. There are many examples of former NFL players who have suffered from CTE and have killed themselves and/or those around them including the Junior Seau suicide event that was mentioned in the opening paragraph. The first example is John Grimsley, who was a former Houston Oilers linebacker. Grimsley shot himself by accident while he was cleaning his gun one day (Football Brains). The former NFL player was a skilled outdoorsman and should have easily performed the task of cleaning his gun. A second example is Justin Strzelczyk, who was a former offensive lineman for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Strzelczyk was involved in a high-speed hit-and-run chase with the police which turned into a fiery crash where he eventually died (Football Brains). Another example is former Canadian professional wrestler Chris Benoit who murdered his wife and child and then took his own life (Football Brains). The final example is Tom McHale, who was a former Tampa Bay Buccaneer. He died at the age of 45 from a drug overdose (Football Brains). All the brains of these former professional athletes were taken for study and all their brains were found to contain the brain disease CTE in them (Football Brains). Another study was done on the affects of repeated concussions causing CTE by Ann McKee. According to Ann McKee, who is a neuropathologist at Bedford VA Medical Center, â€Å"brains of patients with CTE have unique patterns of abnormal protein tangles and cell loss† (Hard Knocks: The Science of Concussions). Her study analyzed the brains of former athletes and war veterans who have experienced multiple brain injuries. McKee’s research showed that out of the 85 brains she has studied, 68 of the brains contained the brain disease CTE (Hard Knocks: The Science of  Concussions). There is extensive research still being done by scientists in the area of CTE and if there is a con nection between repeated blows to the head and the formation of CTE in the brain. In fact the National Football League has decided to donate $30 million to the National Institutes of Health’s Neurology Institute to help further studies on concussions among football players and military troops (NFL Donates $30 Million To Concussion Research). More and more research and evidence on concussions is being brought to the fore front, as well as the numerous tragedies that occurred among former NFL players stemming from repeated concussions. Because of this, the NFL league and the NFL Mild Traumatic Brain Injury committee secretly decided to â€Å"cover up† and put down all the extensive studies and findings that have been recently popping up by scientists outside the NFL. In the PBS TV documentary League of Denial, the NFL is portrayed as a greedy money-driven industry that would do anything to keep the league from falling apart, even to the extent of withholding information from players about the long-term consequences from repeated blows to the head. In this film, the spotlight is cast on Dr. Bennett Omalu who was the first scientist to discover CTE (â€Å"NFL Concussion Cover-up†). His findings of CTE came from the brains of former Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster and his teammate Terry Long. Dr. Omalu’s findings were tremendously influential because it was the spark for the connection between repetitive blows to the head and CTE. However, as Dr. Omalu began publishing his findings about CTE in the brains of Webster and Long, the NFL soon noticed his findings and took action. Dr. Omalu recalled a conversion he had with a NFL doctor in which the NFL doctor said, â€Å"Dr. Omalu, do you know the consequences of what you are doing? If 10 percent of mothers in America started to view football as a dangerous sport, it would be the end of football† (â€Å"NFL Concussion Cover-up†). This obviously shows that NFL doctors realize that the findings between multiple concussions and CTE are true, but they are reluctant to admit to it because they are afraid that the NFL will dissolve into nothing if the â€Å"truth† is discovered. The NFL realized that the league was in jeopardy so they decided to publicly denounce the findings of Dr. Omalu by saying that his work was flawed. However, this was not the only attempt that the NFL made it trying to put  down the findings from scientists on the connection between repetitive concussions and CTE. In a 2007 meeting with the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury committee, Julian Bailes who is the to p neurosurgeon at the Northshore Neurological Institute, displayed several pictures of CTE that was almost certainly caused by frequent concussions. However, the chairman of the committee downplayed all the evidence that was shown to them by Julian Bailes even though the evidence was pretty clear. The Commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, decided that it was best for the league to conduct its own study about concussions. He released the following statements regarding the evidence being shown to the league by â€Å"outside† doctors and researchers, â€Å"You have to look at their entire medical history. To look at something that is isolated without looking at their entire medical history I think is irresponsible† (NFL Covering Up Research?). From just this one instance, we can definitely see that the NFL is trying its best to ignore the â€Å"clear-cut† evidence about the connection between repetitive concussions and CTE. It seems as though the Commissioner and the head of the NFL Brain Injury committee realize that the information and the research that was showed to them was true so they had to make sure it did not leak out to the players and also to the media.

Personal Ethics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 4

Personal Ethics - Essay Example It is beneficial if a nurse who is not a native speaker communicate in English as their second language. This makes it very easy for the nurse to communicate with the patients since most of them speak English. One’s culture impacts on their belief that a warm environment is crucial to maintaining optimal health. In the Filipino culture, formal greetings are usually welcomed with handshakes. Furthermore, a nurse may ask the patients how they feel and nod their heads as a sign of agreement. However, a Filipino nurse may not understand since in their culture head nodding does not always mean agreement. They are also very close to the patients since they believe that kinship goes beyond biological connections. A nurse needs to use an indirect approach when discussing terminal illness for the first time. This has enables effective passage of information without creating the feeling of anxiety. As cited by Ludwick and Silva (2012), nurses need to encourage the patients with chronic illness to have strong faith and they will survive. It is believed that if a person has a strong faith he or she will actually survive. Nurses need to have personal values, such as, managing time. This ensures that they provide care in a timely manner. Studies have demonstrated that nurses are self-less and determined people and always ensure that they take care of the patients as well as clients who deserve suitable and safe care. In some instances, they also apply religious values both in times of happiness and despair. According to Yeo & Moorhouse (2010), ethics in nursing practice entails seeking the best way to take care of the patients together with the best nursing action. Â  It has been found out that ethical values form the basis for collection of codes of ethics. Nurses often act based on the morals and values they have chosen (Mahmoodi, Alhani, Ahmadi, & Kazemnejad, 2008). As cited by Carr and Steutel (2009), morals define a personal character.

The History of the Lands across the Atlantic 1440 1820 Research Paper

The History of the Lands across the Atlantic 1440 1820 - Research Paper Example The Portuguese chronicler, Azarura identifies that there were nearly 1,000 African slaves in Portugal by 1446. He was the head of the royal library. In his account of events in The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, he gave a vivid account of the separation of African slaves from their families during one of such journeys. He said of the Africans: â€Å"faces bathed in tears †¦ others stuck their faces with the palms of their hand, throwing themselves upon the ground† However, this kind of activity was not seen as cruelty. Rather, the Portuguese saw it as an opportunity to 'civilize' the Africans and introduce them to Christianity. The Portuguese government-sponsored explorations of new lands across Africa. This was done through a school of navigators that was funded by the Royal government of Portugal. Also, there were private interests because the Portuguese Crown promised the monopoly and control of new lands discovered by private sailors to the individ uals who found them. Some of the notables were Prince Henry the Navigator. The main commodities the Portuguese sailors sought was ivory, gold, spices, and slaves. Prince Henry, who was a notable royal and sailor explored the African coastline as far as Senegal and Sierra Leone by 1460. In 1469, Fernando Gomes discovered the island of Sao Tome which is 350 miles away from the African coast. In 1471, the Portuguese landed in Elmina, now part of Ghana. They moved further to the Benin Kingdom which is now a part of Nigeria.

Childhood Obesity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Childhood Obesity - Essay Example However, the physical cost of being obese are much greater even than this. It is well-known that obesity can dramatically lower life expectancy at every age level. Approaching epidemic proportions, identifying the causes and treatment of obesity is of utmost importance particularly when working with children who have an entire lifetime ahead of them. An obese person is someone who has more body fat than science considers healthy for their particular height, body type, gender and age. As a general rule, people who are 40 to 100 pounds over this determined ideal weight range are considered obese. People who are more than 100 pounds over this weight range are called morbidly obese. Heredity significantly influences obesity. People who are genetically predisposed to being obese have a harder time trying to lose weight or to maintain a desired body mass. Children born into overweight families are often overweight even before they have the opportunity to try maintaining a healthy weight. Other contributing factors to the problem of obesity in children can include metabolic and socioeconomic circumstances, diseases, endocrine ailments and medications Metabolism refers to how efficiently a person’s body burns up energy. Metabolic levels and hormonal balances differ widely from one person to another and both factor significantly i n controlling weight. (â€Å"Overview of Obesity†, 2007). Overeating, eating fatty foods and spending long periods of time in inactivity also contribute significantly to obesity. Studies have also shown that there is a connection between substandard economic circumstances and the rates of obesity in children. The food available to lower income populations usually has a higher level of empty calories, meaning it is poor in nutritional value but high in fat and corn syrup. Children growing up in low income homes don’t always have the option to eat well and