Adolescence

So we're currently learning about the development occurring during adolescence years.

Apparently the U.S. has the highest rates of adolescence pregnancy in the world. I question how many are planned and how many are not. Also, how does that affect the demographics of the United States?

Our speaker is apparently from a health outcome center in New Jersey and has interesting things they're during for sexual education for teens. She told us some very interesting stories. I actually like the real stories that she told, it really helps with modeling what we can do if we ran into the same situations. For example, there was a girl who was bulimic and could not tell her parents, so they role played the different ways she could tell her parents and she apparently did that.

China's stimulus plan

I didn't realize that China is also planning a stimulus plan in the wake of the global financial crisis. Apparently this crisis is bigger than I first thought.

clipped from www.china.org.cn clipped from www.china.org.cn China has announced a 4 trillion-yuan (585 billion U.S. dollars) two-year economic stimulus package to boost growth and domestic demand, 1.18 trillion yuan of which will be funded by the central government. The stimulus package plan include four major components, including large-scale government spending, industrial restructuring and rejuvenation, scientific research and social safety net. Other projects, including the 600 billion-yuan tax cut, old-age pension increase for enterprise retirees, salary increase to 12 million teachers, subsidies to farmers as well as an 850 billion-yuan three-year investment in health care reform were not included in the 4 trillion-yuan stimulus package, Wen said. clipped from www.china.org.cn "We will provide housing to 7.5 million low-income Chinese in three years, and provide better shelter for 2.4 million Chinese who still live in shacks," the premier said.

Child malnutrition in India

"Small, sick, listless children have long been India’s scourge — “a national shame,” in the words of its prime minister, Manmohan Singh. But even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy.

China, that other Asian economic powerhouse, sharply reduced child malnutrition, and now just 7 percent of its children under 5 are underweight, a critical gauge of malnutrition. In India, by contrast, despite robust growth and good government intentions, the comparable number is 42.5 percent. Malnutrition makes children more prone to illness and stunts physical and intellectual growth for a lifetime."

One does indeed wonder why in the world this is so as India does run a very large feeding program for these kids. "The $1.3 billion Integrated Child Development Services program, India’s primary effort to combat malnutrition, finances a network of soup kitchens in urban slums and villages."

Unfortunately, most of these operating centers are not up to par and the report details further that either the people who it intends to benefit are not showing up or that the center themselves lack the resources to adequately measure the progress of the mother and the kids they are feeding.

"A World Food Program report last month noted that India remained home to more than a fourth of the world’s hungry, 230 million people in all. It also found anemia to be on the rise among rural women of childbearing age in eight states across India. Indian women are often the last to eat in their homes and often unlikely to eat well or rest during pregnancy. Ms. Menon’s institute, based in Washington, recently ranked India below two dozen sub-Saharan countries on its Global Hunger Index."

As the World Food Program has been rather successful in this area of feeding kids I am wondering why the government does not hand it over to them?

"Childhood anemia, a barometer of poor nutrition in a lactating mother’s breast milk, is three times higher in India than in China, according to a 2007 research paper from the institute.

The latest Global Hunger Index described hunger in Madhya Pradesh, a destitute state in central India, as “extremely alarming,” ranking the state somewhere between Chad and Ethiopia.

More surprising, though, it found that “serious” rates of hunger persisted across Indian states that had posted enviable rates of economic growth in recent years, including Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Here in the capital, which has the highest per-capita income in the country, 42.2 percent of children under 5 are stunted, or too short for their age, and 26 percent are underweight. A few blocks from the Indian Parliament, tiny, ill-fed children turn somersaults for spare change at traffic signals.

Back in Jahangirpuri, a dead rat lay in the courtyard in front of Ms. Bala’s nursery. The narrow lanes were lined with scum from the drains. Malaria and respiratory illness, which can be crippling for weak, undernourished children, were rampant. Neighborhood shops carried small bags of potato chips and soda, evidence that its residents were far from destitute.

In another alley, Ms. Menon met a young mother named Jannu, a migrant from the northern town of Lucknow. Jannu said she found it difficult to produce enough milk for the baby in her arms, around 6 months old. His green, watery waste dripped down his mother’s arms. He often has diarrhea, Jannu said, casually rinsing her arm with a tumbler of water.

Ms. Menon could not help but notice how small Jannu was, like so many of Jahangirpuri’s mothers. At 5 feet 2 inches tall, Ms. Menon towered over them. Children who were roughly the same age as her own daughter were easily a foot shorter. Stunted children are so prevalent here, she observed, it makes malnutrition invisible.

“I see a system failing,” Ms. Menon said. “It is doing something, but it is not solving the problem.”

Source

Within the ivory towers

So after you worked so hard to get into the ivory tower of elite educational institutions, what happens?

Fend off the sharks by yourself of course. I'm hopefully kidding, in actuality, most people have quite pleasant experiences in college if they managed to choose the right college for themselves or managed to secure their niche in the wrong colleges.

What your experience is like is all up to you. Usually, these steps will help you to survive college whether you're in the right one or not:

1. Find a circle of good friends
-Most likely they will be people who you live with Freshmen year
-Try as many club as you're interested in during Freshmen year and then shave off the ones you really don't feel like doing
-For those who are religious, finding a good fellowship is crucial to your experience or else you might find yourself adrift in this period of life where there are no rules or guidance from the adults around you

2. Ask the people who have done it before
-Most upper-freshmen do not eat freshmen for lunch or torment them for sport, most people will happily answer questions like which class did you happen to like your freshmen year? or which Professor would you recommend?

3. Talk to your Professor
-If you are paying such a large amount of money for tuition and whatever else, the least you could do is to reap from the benefits of the money that you have spent. Granted, there are Professor who are too busy to give you a second glance, but most will be more than happy to accommodate questions you have about their field of work as long as you're there for their office hours or send emails.

4. Take advantage of the on-campus events
-Especially the big name speakers, most clubs will work their behind off to bring these well known speakers to the campus and you better believe that some of your tuition money goes into making that possible, so if you don't have classes, GO!

5. Do attend classes
-again, why pay when you don't even attend?

6. Subscribe to as many listserv emails as you can
- If your school does not have a campus wide calendar, then your best bet of hearing about world-renowned speakers is through this listservs, plus, if you've signed up for listservs that pertains to your interest, you'll actually hear about events that you're interested in

My Human Anatomy Class on March 3, 2009

So quite a few interesting things happened in my life today. I love it when I can say it.

For our Human development class, we had moral development lectures given by a high school teacher from St. Joe's prep, which is apparently an all boys school which this teacher recounts how after he got his Ph.D for Human sexuality at Penn's graduate school, the boys there gave him the nickname of "sex master" which definitely raised my eyebrows, but I think this men was trying too hard to cater to college students. He said this was to illustrate the people have moral development by ceasing to call teachers nicknames. Okay.

So we did go through the 10 commandments of the old testament, technically 7 of them, it did sadden me to know that many of the nursing students don't know it. I am beginning to believe in the myth that highly educated people are atheists and their children are too. It also saddened me to see the majority side on that suicide is fine for old people and that abortions are fine too. It reminds me of that one line from the Great debaters, peace through desolation where a roman general say he brought peace to the nations he subjugated when he really just killed off everyone. I wonder about Jonathan Swift's proposed solution to eat babies. It's ironic that the people who say everyone should have their own choice in when to end their life also say that is is fine for someone to decide another person's fate too. There seems to be a majority that it is okay to kill people who can't make decisions.

The class we learned:
How we judge a decision to be moral:
1. consequences
2. intention
3. action itself
4. circumstances
5. law
6. conscience