Monday, April 12, 2010

1.Virtual Worlds, Real Science: Epidemiologists, Social Scientists Flock to Online World
Brian Vastag
Science News, Vol. 172, No. 17 (Oct. 27, 2007), pp. 264-265
Published by: Society for Science & the Public
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20056213

This article I found is about World of Warcraft and the effects of a wide spread epidemic. Apparently in 2005 Blizzard release a new dungeon and one of the curses they allowed the boss to have seaped out into the world and sread everywhere from there. This was very useful to people who study the effect of epidemics on people because even though it was in a vurtual world many of the responses were life like. "Word spread urging everyone to flee, but still the plague ripped through the world creating a holocaust." I believe this quote shows the severity of Massive online games and how serious it's players take it.

The Attitudes, Feelings, and Experiences
of Online Gamers: A Qualitative Analysis
Zaheer Hussain, M.Sc. and Mark D. Griffiths, Ph.D.
CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR
Volume 12, Number 6, 2009
ยช Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089=cpb.2009.0059

This scholarly article is a pretty big experiment done on 71 participants from 11 different countries on the effects of MMORPGs. I know for a fact that this article will be helpful in paper 4 because it's title and abstract discuss exactly what I am interested in.Apparantly, "81% of online gamers were male and that
the mean age of players was 28 years." I find this very interesting and can't wait to see what else this article has to offer for me.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Group Essay

The view taken by Tim Wise is that race is the primary casual factor in how an individual is able to work, and how easily they may progress in American society. Spe-cifically, a member of the American white majority will progress far easier than an equally capable minority individual. However, we feel that such a claim is mostly fictitious, and is not settled in reasoned fact.
Simply put by self-proclaimed anti-racism activist, Tim Wise, “skin color has been given social meaning that affects people’s lives” (Cook, 2009). His belief is that minori-ties are still often oppressed, both intentionally and unintentionally, by the light-skinned majority of Americans. He states that, “people of color are victims of housing discrimination 3 million times a year” (Cook, 2009). Using a rough approximation, this means that nearly one in three minorities moving are denied housing in some area annually. Clearly, from Wise’s view, with such high occurrence, racism is not a fringe issue
We contend however, that racism is not as significant of an issue that Wise makes it out to be. On the topic of putting a wall on the Mexican-American border, he says that such an action is “selective enforcement. [American’s have a longer…border to the north, and [America] isn’t building a wall there” (Cook, 2009). Such a statement does not bear any weight though. As the United States does not have a significant im-migration problem from the Canadian border, there is no need to merit any sort of phys-ical barrier along the border. However, on the Mexican-American border as many as an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrates make their way into the United States annually. Wise goes on to claim that police tend to be racist as well, citing that Black and Latino males are two to three times more likely to be stopped for a drug search as whites, while white individuals are far more likely to be carrying illicit drugs. This statement ig-nores where individuals are pulled over, and questions of crime rates in areas where drugs are more common. In these areas arrest rates may very well be on par between individuals, yet possession rates are unrelated to arrest rates. In rural areas where mi-nority numbers tend to be low and possession rates are still high. As such, the concept of race causing privilege is mostly fictitious, and for most purposes nonexistent.
From this I feel so much anger, but it’s not the anger that you are all thinking I’m feeling. I am not some racist who feels I need to slam any race. As you can tell from my earlier writings in this blog I do not have sympathy for other races because frankly I feel I am just as labeled and oppressed as they are for being white. As a white male I am said to be superior to all and with that I have no opinion on racism that isn’t racist. I say screw that… how is that fair? Just because some white man’s ancestors messed up means I deserve to be oppressed because of it? My family migrated to the States in the 1950’s from Russia and Germany and you want to tell me that I come from some white owned plantation in the 1800’s where blacks and Latinos were miss-treated? Well thank you for being racist and assuming that. I have done nothing to deserve this oppression just like blacks and Latinos and that’s why I wish to make an argument on why exactly we still have the word race around?
From the looks of it, giving people a race has only allowed someone to be supe-rior, so why can’t we just abolish all races and consider man as a whole? I’m tired of every time I am oppressed and it’s labeled as reverse racism and it is ok. Why can’t we just do what the great Martin Luther King, Jr. had in mind and make all men equal? Don’t you people see? Tim Wise is not for equality, he’s for getting even. He believes that since blacks and Latinos have been oppressed for so long I owe them something. Let me tell you that I do not take any part in this oppression and racism he speaks of and if you say I do well then I think you are a racist.
If I was to go to any other part of the world I am considered the minority and then it’s ok for me to be oppressed but since I am in a land of majority whites it is impossible for a black or Latino man to be racist towards me? I feel you people are missing some-thing in this argument and that something is logic. This is why I strongly urge that we take all races out of the United States and change it to man. No more special scholar-ships, no more we don’t serve your kind here, no more of anything that is oppressing. If you can get special privileges for the color of your skin then I think I might just go dye my skin brown, dye my hair black, speak with an accent, and apply for a college, and in doing so I might just send in another application as a white man as well with the same criteria and see which one gets in and then when either is let go (now days I feel like the white person wouldn’t get in) I would open a lawsuit towards that school and show them that I will not stand for this racist BULL SHIT! I don’t care how you justify allowing the color of someone’s skin to grant them special privileges your are promoting racism and in doing so are keeping racism alive in this country, making anyone and everyone who allows special privileges to races, a racist, not the common white male, Mr. Tim Wise.
How might racism affect vegetarian and omnivorous food communities I’m not quite sure and frankly I don’t believe they do and until someone else can prove to me how this might be I have nothing more to say on this issue towards paper 3.


Works Cited
Wise, Tim. "By the Color If Their Skin." Interview by David Cook. The Sun July 2009: 4-12. Print