FINAL PAPER DUE IN 3 Days (3/26)

Hello Team!

I really hope that each of you is staying safe. And I hope that you have been able to make the transition to online learning without difficulty. REMEMBER to email me your paper by 1:45pm on Monday, March 23rd. ramseyraeann@fhda.edu

Email your paper as a WORD file or Copy and Paste it into the body of the email.

Y'all have been a GREAT class this quarter and I am disappointed we did not get to finish up with our face to face meetings. Remember to SEE what influences are in popular culture. Then make your choices wisely.

If any of you signed us for the U.S. History class I am teaching next quarter, I will look forward to seeing you then.

Please email me if you have questions. And take care.

Cheers,
Dr. Ramsey

UPDATE

Hello Team!

Thank you all for your patience as we continue to work through De Anza College's decision to close all face to face classes. Moving all of the extra classes online has been a great deal of work, and for some of the instructors (like me) it has put us a little behind with grading. Grades will be caught up by Monday 3/16 at 10pm.

In the meantime, I hope that you are all staying safe.

For the REMAINDER of the term, our course in now online. Be sure to check the blog to watch for announcements, AND you must also be checking your email. 

I have CANCELED MIDTERM 3. So the only thing left is the Final Research Paper. There will be NO debate. The paper is due on Monday, March 23rd by 1:45pm. It must be emailed to ramseyraeann@fhda.edu by then. Make sure the paper is a WORD file or COPY and PASTE the paper into the email. If I cannot open the paper, it will be a zero.

I will not be able to extend deadlines so be SURE to email your paper on time. 

Please email me if you have any questions. If it is urgent, you may text me at: 936-689-7375. If you text, state your first and last name and which class you are in.

Cheers,
Dr. Ramsey

Video Game Addiction

Video Game Addiction No Fun

Compulsive video gaming is a modern-day psychological disorder that experts tell WebMD is becoming more and more popular.

By Sherry Rauh
WebMD Feature

Reviewed byLouise Chang, MD

At an addiction treatment center in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, teenagers and young adults begin detox by admitting they are powerless over their addiction. But these addicts aren't hooked on drugs or alcohol. They are going cold turkey to break their dependence on video games.

Keith Bakker, director of Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants, tells WebMD he created the new program in response to a growing problem among young men and boys. "The more we looked at it, the more we saw [gaming] was taking over the lives of kids."

Detox for video game addiction may sound like a stretch, but addiction experts say the concept makes sense. "I was surprised we didn't think of it here in America," says Kimberly Young, PsyD, clinical director of the Center for On-Line Addiction and author of Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the Signs of Internet Addiction -- and a Winning Strategy for Recovery. "I've had so many parents call me over the last year or two, particularly about the role-playing games online. I see it getting worse as the opportunity to game grows - for example, cell phone gaming."

But can a game truly become an addiction? Absolutely, Young tells WebMD. "It's a clinical impulse control disorder," an addiction in the same sense as compulsive gambling.

Recognizing the Symptoms of Depression

Defining Addiction

While most people associate addiction with substances, such as drugs or alcohol, doctors recognize addictive behaviors as well. In a WebMD feature on the definition of addiction, psychiatrist Michael Brody, MD, set forth the following criteria:

1. The person needs more and more of a substance or behavior to keep him going.

2. If the person does not get more of the substance or behavior, he becomes irritable and miserable.

Young says compulsive gaming meets these criteria, and she has seen severe withdrawal symptoms in game addicts. "They become angry, violent, or depressed. If [parents] take away the computer, their child sits in the corner and cries, refuses to eat, sleep, or do anything."

The Psychological Factor

Unlike with substance abuse, the biological aspect of video game addiction is uncertain. "Research suggests gambling elevates dopamine," Young says, and gaming is in the same category. But there's more to addiction than brain chemistry. "Even with alcohol, it's not just physical. There's a psychological component to the addiction, knowing 'I can escape or feel good about my life.'"

Bakker agrees. "The person is trying to change the way they feel by taking something outside of themselves. The [cocaine] addict learns, 'I don't like the way I feel, I take a line of cocaine.' For gamers, it's the fantasy world that makes them feel better."

The lure of a fantasy world is especially pertinent to online role-playing games. These are games in which a player assumes the role of a fictional character and interacts with other players in a virtual world. As Young puts it, an intelligent child who is unpopular at school can "become dominant in the game." The virtual life becomes more appealing than real life.

Where's the Harm?

Too much gaming may seem relatively harmless compared with the dangers of a drug overdose, but Bakker says video game addiction can ruin lives. Children who play four to five hours per day have no time for socializing, doing homework, or playing sports, he says. "That takes away from normal social development. You can get a 21-year-old with the emotional intelligence of a 12-year-old. He's never learned to talk to girls. He's never learned to play a sport."

In older addicts, compulsive gaming can jeopardize jobs or relationships. Howard, a 33-year-old project manager who asked to be identified only by his first name, started playing an online role-playing game about six months ago. He plays for three to four hours almost every day -- more on weekends --occasionally putting off meals or sleep. His says he's addicted.

Addiction Warning Signs

Spending a lot of time gaming doesn't necessarily qualify as an addiction. "Eighty percent of the world can play games safely," Bakker says. "The question is: Can you always control your gaming activity?"

According to the Center for On-Line Addiction, warning signs for video game addiction include:

· Playing for increasing amounts of time

· Thinking about gaming during other activities

· Gaming to escape from real-life problems, anxiety, or depression

· Lying to friends and family to conceal gaming

· Feeling irritable when trying to cut down on gaming

In addition, video game addicts tend to become isolated, dropping out of their social networks and giving up other hobbies. "It's about somebody who has completely withdrawn from other activities," Young says. "One mother called me when her son dropped out of baseball. He used to love baseball, so that's when she knew there was a problem."

Howard, the project manager, says he still goes out with friends and family, so he doubts he is addicted. "I am not limiting myself to gaming as my only pastime or hobby," he tells WebMD. "If I needed to stop playing, I'm convinced that I could."

Parents, Take Note

Young and Bakker say the overwhelming majority of video game addicts are males under 30. "It's usually children with poor self-esteem and social problems," Young tells WebMD. "They're intelligent and imaginative but don't have many friends at school." She says a family history of addiction may also be a factor.

If you're concerned your child may be addicted to video games don't dismiss it as a phase, Young says. Keep good documents of the child's gaming behavior, including:

· Logs of when the child plays and for how long

· Problems resulting from gaming

· How the child reacts to time limits

"You need to document the severity of the problem," Young says. "Don't delay seeking professional help; if there is a problem, it will probably only get worse."

Video Game Detox

Treatment for video game addiction is similar to detox for other addictions, with one important difference. Computers have become an important part of everyday life, as well as many jobs, so compulsive gamers can't just look the other way when they see a PC.

"It's like a food addiction," Young explains. "You have to learn to live with food."

Because video game addicts can't avoid computers, they have to learn to use them responsibly. Bakker says that means no gaming. As for limiting game time to an hour a day, he compares that to "an alcoholic saying he's only going to drink beer."

Bakker says the toughest part of treating video game addicts is that "it's a little bit more difficult to show somebody they're in trouble. Nobody's ever been put in jail for being under the influence of [a game]."

The key, he says, is to show gamers they are powerless over their addiction, and then teach them "real-life excitement as opposed to online excitement."

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/features/video-game-addiction-no-fun?page=3

Book Recommendations

The Age of Manipulation 

By Wilson Bryan 

Key Advertising and Psychology: the Perfect Duo: The Subliminal Hidden Message 

 By Morgan Grey 

 Swift Viewing: The Popular Life of Subliminal Influence 

 By Charles R. Acland 

 Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics 

 By Kalle Lasn  

Design Anarchy 

By Kalle Lasn 

 Subliminal Seduction 

By Wilson Bryan Key 

 Other Books on Popular Culture 

 The Philosophy of War Films 

By David LaRocca 

 Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics 

 By Lilly J. Goren and Justin Vaughn 

Cultural Appropriation

This Halloween we’ll see kids, college students, and other revelers dressed in costumes ranging from scary to hilarious: Chewbaccas, spandex police officers, Harry Potters, Frodos… even Elvis. But at any party, we have a good chance of seeing cultural appropriation. We might see white people glibly dressed in mock Native American headdresses, frat brothers dressing “ghetto”, people who have no real connection to India wearing red dots on their foreheads, would-be Zulus, Geishas (from Texas), and of course a gringo in a sombrero.

Such mimicry has come under increasing condemnation recently, and probably for good reasons. But, we might wonder, what exactly is wrong with it? And how precisely should we define “cultural appropriation” anyway?

On the basis of the examples above, we might say cultural appropriation is use or mimicry of artifacts or manners from another culture without permission from any members of that culture.
But it’s not hard to see that this definition won’t do.

It implies, wrongly, that every time someone from one culture uses an idea from another culture, without explicitly asking, that “cultural appropriation” has occurred. But I don’t think, for example, someone who goes to France and then comes home and makes crepes should be called a “cultural appropriator.” (In some weak sense, sure, but that’s not the sense we’re after.) Nor should someone who visits China and learns how to use chopsticks or how to sing a song they heard on the radio.
Much if not most culture (good and bad) results from different cultures bumping into each other and borrowing or just absorbing ideas. So if we’re to talk about “cultural appropriation”—as opposed to just “culture”—we have to mean something more.

So the definition above is an instructive failure. I think many people would be tempted to define “cultural appropriation” in this fashion. But we’ve seen that it wrongly includes mere cultural influences and instances of learning that are in no way problematic. What next?

It seems to me that there is no way to understand the concept of cultural appropriation properly without understanding the historical background of colonialism. Colonialism was and is the systematic subjugation of one group of people by another, where that subjugation is motivated and rationalized by racist ideology. Examples of this have occurred throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas, usually with Europeans as the aggressors, though Chinese, Japanese, and Ottoman empires have historically established colonies as well.

In my view, it’s the latter component of colonialism, the racist ideology, that is crucial for understanding what cultural appropriation really is. I think anything worth applying the term “cultural appropriation” to will be something that expresses at least a psychological vestige of a racist ideology that figured in one of the large-scale colonialist projects.

Racist ideologies characteristically portray an entire group of people, a race or ethnicity, as simplistic, naïve, lazy, untrustworthy, or violent. And such portrayal, embedded in the mind in the form of stereotypes, is used in colonialist contexts to rationalize more brutal forms of mistreatment and ultimately appropriation of much more than just culture.

So this is what differentiates merely using chopsticks to eat (which is not cultural appropriation in any interesting sense) from dressing up for Halloween like a “Chinese” guy from a bad Kung Fu movie (definitely cultural appropriation). In the latter case, the non-Chinese person wearing the outfit expresses—typically unwittingly—a psychological tendency, a tendency to think of another person as a simpler kind of creature than oneself. Furthermore, it is a tendency to think of a whole class of other people in simplifying terms. This psychological tendency is the vestige, or one manifestation of it, that I referred to above.

So a more accurate definition of “cultural appropriation” goes like this: cultural appropriation is where people from a group that oppressed or oppresses another group mimics or represents cultural artifacts or manners of the oppressed group in a way that expresses or reinforces psychological elements of the racist ideology inherent in the colonialist project responsible for the oppression. Such appropriating mimicry can take many forms, but what unifies them will be an implicit or explicit view of other people that makes them out to be less than what they are.

Is cultural appropriation inherently morally wrong? Or is it merely stupid and abrasive? The progenitor of cultural appropriation, colonialism, was and is certainly morally wrong, without question. But does the same go for the mere putting on of a silly Halloween costume?
The details of any given case will matter. Furthermore, I think this is an area where it’s better to think in continuous terms of morally better and worse, rather than wrong or not wrong simpliciter. A European’s going to a Halloween party in a traditional Congolese suit they somehow acquired may not be a gross moral transgression, though it might make us morally uneasy. But whatever its moral status, going in blackface is clearly much, much worse.

The moral vice, when there is vice, consists in perpetuating components of a racist ideology that, in more pronounced forms, motivates and rationalizes much more significant harms. We may grant that one outfit on one occasion might not do much more harm than leaving a few people seriously annoyed. But it signals to members of one’s group—the currently or historically oppressing group—that certain patterns of thought about another group are okay, even something to be enjoyed. Against the background of such signaling, more coordinated aggression can emerge.
These thoughts may all seem too weighty to be about what to wear to your next Halloween party. And perhaps in some way they are. But the psychological fact of implicit racism and other forms of prejudice are by now well known. Given that, the correct thought is that it’s better morally safe than morally sorry.

In any case, you can always be Chewbacca, Harry Potter, or a cop in spandex. You’ll then be merely silly, but perhaps that’s a good thing.


https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/what-cultural-appropriation

Media & Children

Why to Avoid TV for Infants & Toddlers

​By: David L. Hill, MD, FAAP

Parents are often shocked when I tell them that pediatricians think it's a bad idea for children to watch TV or use mobile apps before age 18 months, because most toddlers already have. Surveys tell us that 92.2% of 1-year-olds have already used a mobile device, some starting as young as age 4 months.

Early Brain Development

I hear a lot of parents say, "But my baby likes it!" Infants may stare at the bright colors and motion on a screen, but their brains are incapable of making sense or meaning out of all those bizarre pictures. 

It takes around 18 months for a baby's brain to develop to the point where the symbols on a screen come to represent their equivalents in the real world.

What infants and toddlers need most to learn is interaction with the people around them. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't video-chat with a distant grandparent or a deployed parent, but when it comes to day-to-day learning they need to touch things, shake them, throw them, and most of all to see the faces and hear the voices of those they love the most. Apps can teach toddlers to tap and swipe at a screen, but studies tell us that these skills don't translate into real-world learning. See Healthy Digital Media Use Habits for Babies, Toddlers & Preschoolers.

Where's the Harm?

So sure, babies and toddlers don't get anything out of watching TV, but if they seem to like it, where's the harm? If a little TV is what it takes for you to get dinner on the table, isn't it better for them than, say, starving? Yes, watching TV is better than starving, but it's worse than not watching TV. Good evidence suggests that screen viewing before age 18 months has lasting negative effects on children's language development, reading skills, and short term memory. It also contributes to problems with sleep and attention.

If "you are what you eat," then the brain is what it experiences, and video entertainment is like mental junk food for babies and toddlers.

The problem lies not only with what toddlers are doing while they're watching TV; it's what they aren't doing. Specifically, children are programmed to learn from interacting with other people. The dance of facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language between a toddler and parent is not only beautiful, it's so complex that researchers have to record these interactions on video and slow them down just to see everything that's going on. Whenever one party in this dance, child or parent, is watching TV, the exchange comes to a halt.

A toddler learns a lot more from banging pans on the floor while you cook dinner than he does from watching a screen for the same amount of time, because every now and then the two of you look at each other.

Just having the TV on in the background, even if "no one is watching it," is enough to delay language development. Normally a parent speaks about 940 words per hour when a toddler is around. With the television on, that number falls by 770! Fewer words means less learning.

Toddlers are also learning to pay attention for prolonged periods, and toddlers who watch more TV are more likely to have problems paying attention at age 7. Video programming is constantly changing, constantly interesting, and almost never forces a child to deal with anything more tedious than an infomercial.

After age 2 things change, at least somewhat. During the preschool years some children do learn some skills from educational TV. Well-designed shows can teach kids literacy, math, science, problem-solving, and prosocial behavior. Children get more out of interactive programs like Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street when they answer the characters' questions. Educational TV makes the biggest difference for children whose homes are the least intellectually stimulating.

What You Can Do:

Naturally, children learn more when they watch TV or use apps with a parent. Content matters, a lot. All programs educate kids about something, but stick with ones that are designed to teach children stuff they should actually know like language and math.

Regardless of content, cap your child's electronic entertainment time at 1 hour a day from age 18 months to age five.

Remember, too, TV is still TV whether you actually watch it on a TV screen or on a mobile phone or computer.

https://healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pages/Why-to-Avoid-TV-Before-Age-2.aspx

GRADES and EXTRA CREDIT

Grades are posted in the Grade Book (see link in sidebar).

Here is the information on the one and only extra credit assignment this term. You can earn 15pts for going to the morning session and another 15 for attending the luncheon (which is free). If you are coming, be SURE to go to the link and RSVP (list yourself as a student):
https://missioncollege.formstack.com/forms/women_in_leadership