Blood Sports (Debate) Essay Example for Free

Blood Sports (Debate) Essay Blood sports should not be banned; whatever problems there are with the sport can be fixed with reforms. The World Health Organization has called for tighter regulation, including â€Å"Simple rules, such as requiring medical clearance, national passports to prevent players from fighting under more than one name, restricting fights for fixed periods after knockouts, requiring that ringside physicians be paid by the state and not the promoter, and making sure that the players are aware of the potential long-term consequence of blood sports, may help protect them to some degree. †The Australian Medical Association additionally â€Å"recommends that media coverage should be subject to control codes similar to those which apply to television screening of violence. †Finally, the World Medical Association suggests that all matches should have a ring physician authorized to stop the fight at any time. It has been reported that no safety regulations would be effective if head blows remain however such authors incorrectly apportion blame on boxing for a group of diseases known as Parkinson’s syndrome. Blood sports can result in chronic traumatic neurological conditions if fighters are not well matched, and fight without regulations in regard to their exposure. Boxing cannot cause Parkinson’s disease or other conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease as those are genetic conditions so to include them together as one set of conditions is incorrect and misleading. About 80% of deaths are caused by head, brain, and neck injuries, so the removal of the head as a scoring region may make a huge difference to the injury outcomes for this sport. However it would also change the very nature of the sport; and may mean people won’t participate in it. Ultimately, governments should do what they can to make blood sports as safe as possible, without losing the essence of the sport or banning it entirely. - (Banning blood sports would force people to channel their aggression into more harmful, violent activities) There is no conclusive scientific evidence linking increased contact sport participation with being more violent in social settings. Such statements make it sound as thought we would have not violence in society if all contact sport was removed and we all know that is untrue. Blood sports isn’t about violent aggression, it is about controlled aggression this is very different to violent behaviors. In a report on â€Å"violent† sports in schools, conducted by the Lance Armstrong Foundation, a martial-arts instructor explained, â€Å"Contact and combat sports allow students to deal with their aggression in a safe environment, rather than in the context of the classroom or school hallway. †This type of outlet is not only important for youth, but for adults as well. Jason Brick said, â€Å"Positive Views on Violence In Sports,† Live strong, January 7, 2011, accessed July 13, 2011, With /proposition (The Effect of blood sports on the viewers) Blood Sports have been around for decades. Viewing violence generally triggers or serves in the increase of aggression of an individual. Sports such as wrestling (smack down) and Ultimate Fighter Competition (UFC) are bloody sports and have mostly negative effects on those who watch them. The objective of these two sports is to beat an individual into unconsciousness, make them tap out by inflicting pain, if none of these is accomplished within a time frame, the match is to be stopped and the judges decide who wins. Many children, teenagers, and even adults tend to try and imitate a knock out or combos that were seen performed at one of these fights onto an individual in an uncontrolled environment whether it is their sibling, friend, coworker, or a stranger for different reasons that includes but is not limited to a misunderstanding or horse playing. Watching this sport leaves the viewer psychologically aggressive. For example, if someone watches a match and gets into a fight with another person later on, that person is more likely to use a technique he saw during the fight, and since there is no referee to stop the fight in case of suffocation or tap-out, the victim is more likely to bleed, pass out or even dies. During the 1980’s, two men were in a bar discussing the Marvin Haggler and Sugar Ray Leonard fight that had occurred several days before, and in the process on trying to show exactly how one of the punch landed, both men went outside, drawing a crowd with them. The demonstration turned tragic when one of the men landed a punch to the jaw of the other, and such was the power of the blow, that the victim fell, hit his head on the pavement and started to bleed, and had to be buried a few weeks later. Seeing and permitting violence to be seen makes it seem normal and legal when in fact it is not normal and it is horrible, but here is where lies another problem which is called desensitization. Many years ago when a horrible scene was about to be portrayed on your television set, there would first appear a window saying the images that you are about to see might injure the sensibility of certain people or words to that effect. Well, have you noticed that now they no longer even bother showing that little window? Its as if the media know that human kind are used to everything by now. That nothing is going to affect them that much. So what does this show? It shows that us human beings are getting desensitized to everything and when that happens it also means that we dont get so emotional about anything anymore and so consequently dont fight any more either in order to strive for a change. We have all come to a point where nothing moves us that much anymore. (Pain and Injury as the Price of blood sports) Many people think about sports in a paradoxical way: They accept violence in sports, but the injuries caused by that violence make them uneasy. They seem to want violence without consequences— like the ?ctionalized violence they see in the media and video games in which characters engage in brutality without being seriously or permanently injured. However, blood sports are real, and it causes real pain, injury, disability, and even death (Dater, 2005; Farber, 2004; Leahy, 2008; Rice, 2005; Smith, 2005b; Young, 2004a). Ron Rice, an NFL player whose career ended when he tackled an opponent, discusses the real consequences of blood sports. The brutal body contact of the tackle left him temporarily paralyzed and permanently disabled. He remembers that â€Å"before I hit the ground, I knew my career was over. . . . My body froze. I was like a tree that had been cut down, teetering, then crashing, unable to break my fall. † Research on pain and injury among athletes helps us understand that blood sports have real consequences. Studies indicate that professional sports involving brutal body contact and borderline violence are among the most dangerous workplaces in the occupational world. The same could be said about high-pro? le power and performance intercollegiate sports in which 80 percent of male and female athletes sustain at least one serious injury while playing their sports and nearly 70 percent are disabled for two or more weeks. Research shows a close connection between dominant ideas about masculinity and the high rate of injuries in many sports. Ironically, some power and performance sports are organized so that players feel that their manhood is up for grabs. Men who de? ne masculinity in terms of physically dominating others often use violence in sports as an expression of this code of manhood. Until they critically examine issues related to gender and the organization of their sports, they will mistakenly de? ne violence as a source of rewards rather than a source of chronic pain and disabilities that constrain and threaten their lives.

Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club Essay -- Joy Luck

Mothers and Daughters in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club Throughout Amy Tan’s novel, The Joy Luck Club, the reader can see the difficulites in the mother-daughter relationships.   The mothers came to America from China hoping to give their daughters better lives than what they had.   In China, women were â€Å"to be obedient, to honor one’s parents, one’s husband, and to try to please him and his family,† (Chinese-American Women in American Culture).   They were not expected to have their own will and to make their own way through life.   These mothers did not want this for their children so they thought that in America â€Å"nobody [would] say her worth [was] measured by the loudness of her husband’s belch†¦nobody [would] look down on her†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (3).   To represent everything that was hoped for in their daughters, the mothers wanted them to have a â€Å"swan- a creature that became more than what was hoped for,† (3).   This swan was all of the mothers’ good intentio ns.   However, when they got to America, the swan was taken away and all she had left was one feather. America was not everything the mothers had expected for their daughters.   The mothers always wanted to give their daughters the feather to tell of their hardships, but they never could.   They wanted to wait until the day that they could speak perfect American English.   However, they never learned to speak their language, which prevented them from communicating with their daughters.   All the mothers in The Joy Luck Club had so much hope for their daughters in America, but instead their lives ended up mirroring their mother’s life in China.   All the relationships had many hardships because of miscommunication from their different cultures.   As they grew older the children realized that their ... ... and in her hurry to get away, she (falls) before she even reach(s) the corner,† (87).   This foreshadows the relationship between the mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club.   The daughters can not understand the reasoning behind their mothers’ decisions.   However, the mothers realize their daughters are so much like them and they do not want this to happen.   The daughters grow up being â€Å"Americanized,† but as they grow older they begin to want to understand their Chinese culture.   All of the characters learned many valuable lessons that will be passed on to their own children. Work Cited Chinese-American Women in American Culture.   http://www.ics.uci.edu/~tdo/ea/chinese.html Roella. http://members.tripod.com/~Roella/AmyTan/ Tan, Amy.   The Joy Luck Club.   New York.   Ivy Books.   1989. Tavernise, Peter.   http://www.mindspring.com/~petert/tan.htm

Homeschooling should replace normal schooling

Homeschooling should replace normal schooling for the betterment of students in Hong Kong. Homeschooling refers to the education of children at home, typically by parents or tutors, unlike the formal settings of schools. In many countries around the world, children are not legally obligated to attend school. In England, France, Canada, the United States and Australia, it is perfectly legal for parents to educate their kids at home. Homeschooling is becoming more popular every day, with a growth rate of 7 to 15 percent per year over the world. There are about two million children currently earning at home in the world.Homeschooled kids do well on standardized tests, are welcome at college and universities, and as adults, have a reputation for being self- directed learners and reliable employees. This essay is going to examine whether homeschooling should replace normal schooling for the betterment of students in Hong Kong. Homeschooling makes children miss the golden opportunity to pr actice their social skills. School is the miniature of society. One needs to have not only knowledge of the world, but also interpersonal communication skills in order to survive, not to mention excel in a society.If a child is taught at home solely by his/ her parents, the child misses the chance to meet and interact with other kids. Peer learning has vital benefits as well. By communicating with friends, students can improve their interpersonal skills. Homeschooled children cannot take part in extra-curricular activities like debate, choir and team sports. As interactive learning is such an important component in modern education, homeschooling deprives children of their chance to develop their social skills and network, and even friends. Furthermore, home is not the most suitable environment for learning which lower he effectiveness of learning.Home cannot provide many different hardware which can only be provided by day schools. For instance, the different kinds of experiments m ust be conducted in a safety equipped and qualified laboratory . The many apparatus like Bunsen Burner, funnel and beaker can only be found in a laboratory. Home can never provide such hardware to support the diverse learning needs of children . The equipment of language labs, music room and library only appear in a school setting. Besides, there are too many temptations at home, such as television nd computer games, which would prevent children from concentrating on learning.Homeschooling undermines the development of creative thinking. Parents-to- children teaching is atter all the indoctrination ot parents thinking and values system to their children. In Hong Kong, most parents are very concerned about their children and hope them have a bright future. Therefore, they may try to give what they think is the best to the children. It is common that parents force their children to have piano lesson, choir practice, drawing class and so on in Hong Kong. Parents tend to orcefully spoon feed what they want their children to know.In many cases, children cannot develop multiple thinking perspectives. They Just do what their parents ask them to do. Their creativity and critical thinking, which are highly-valued in today's competitive world, can hardly be formed. On the other hand, it is not suitable to implement home-schooling in Hong Kong. Most parents have full time Job. They do not have time to teach their children. Moreover, parents are not professional in teaching when compared to trained teachers. They may not know how to teach their children effectively. Also, it is impossible for parents to know all knowledge of different subjects.In school, teachers are specialize in few subjects and they can concentrate on those subjects to prepare teaching materials. According to Bill and Ana Moody, who homeschool their children, they admitted that it is hard to teach science topics properly at home. They do not have sufficient knowledge of science and science requires to do experiments. Homeschooling brings another problem: how to assess the ability of students? Hong Kong is a knowledge-based society, it is important to have certificates to prove ne's academic Usually, one will get a Job easily with higher education level.Different jobs have different required education levels. If homeschooling is implemented, there is no standard to assess students unless all students Join public examinations offered by authorized organization and the Education Bureau. Homeschooling does not provide a standard to assess whether students has understand the knowledge fully. As every parents and tutors may have design a different curriculum for students, there is no standard of what basic knowledge that students should learn.Some people argued that a unified education system simply cannot cater for the individual needs of each and every student and, therefore, homeschooling is a better way for children to learn as it is more flexible which can cater individual's needs . It can provide a tailor-made learning schedule which can cater learning speed of the children and specific requirements by those who best understand them: their parents. It may allow students a more flexible combination of subjects which cater for individual needs. This would arouse interest in study, giving students the initiative to learn.However, small class teaching , which is quite popular in Hong Kong, can also cater the needs of different children. Due to the decreasing birth rate, schools started to implement small-class teaching and has smaller teacher-to student ratio. This allows teachers to pay more attention to each student in class. Flexible combination of subjects can also be achieved by new curriculum. In the past, usually students were divided into art, science and commerce classes and they were only allowed to choose subjects which are related to each other. Now, students under the new curriculum are allowed to choose subjects freely.For example, student can choo se to study Biology, a science subject, and grapny, an art subject. Some also claimed that homeschooling can enhance close family relationship. However, this may not be true. Conflicts and arguments are easily happened when parents stay with their children all the time. Parents may easily lose temper when their children are not listening to them or cannot follow their teaching schedule as they are more emotionally affected when facing their own children. Moreover, children may easily lose concentration on learning as there are too many temptations at home as mentioned before.If parents punished their children for this, the parent- child relationship would suffer. All in all, homeschooling should not replace normal schooling for the betterment of students as there are too many weaknesses of homeschooling though admitted that normal schooling has its flaws. In the current education system, students are required to study a fixed and long syllabus within a short period of time. Students study under tremendous pressure and may eventually lose interest in study. However, homeschooling neglects the social development of children which is vital in modern society.

Paranoia in Prose An analytical treatment of Edgar Allan...

In Edgar Allan Poe’s classic work, â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart† we meet an unnamed, gender neutral, narrator who presents a story of madness in the first person. I suspect this ambiguity with gender was purposeful on Poe’s part so as not to allow any preconceived notions about the motives that the narrator may have. For my purposes, I will assume the narrator is male. This narrator lives with an old man whom he claims to have a genuine love and respect for. It soon, however, becomes alarming clear the narrator is mad. What follows is my analytical review of this characters mental state. (Poe) The first hint that something is awry with our narrator is when he relates that he has suffered from some malady which goes without added†¦show more content†¦Perhaps he feels the only way to escape this predator is to kill it. Then to give further evidence that he has no motive other than to get away from the cold gaze of the eye, he suggests that he has no interest in the old man’s wealth when he says that â€Å"for his gold, I had no desire.† Once again, this leads me to the conclusion that he is mad since there is no worldly motive to harm the man and there is nothing the man can do about the condition of his eye. It seems an odd juxtaposition to be willing to hurt someone that you also love. This is a theme common to many cultures. There are numerous accounts of people doing horrible things to those that mean the most to them. It could that Poe was trying to show how this sort of violence against what we hold most dear is self-harming. I am forced t o wonder if this eye is so disturbing, why he would not just leave the residence. This would be a simple, safe, and logical solution. Of course, logic is not in the toolkit for our narrator as we will continue to discover. (Poe) As the story progresses, I’m struck by his contradictory use of terms. For instance, when he talks of thrusting his head through an opening in the door, and at the same time claims that it took a full hour to do so. The narrator sees no logical conflict in these two terms anymore than he sees a conflict in killing someone that you love. I believe that this is still more evidence