Animal Rights and Human Health

As a former vegetarian, I am completely on board with animal rights. The only reason I began eating meat again was because of health problems. Therefore, I understand the consumption of chicken and other meats for nutrients, but I don't see the point in slaying animals that will only lead to health risks. Why kill dolphins to eat when you are only subjecting yourself to unhealthy mercury levels, and thus producing the exact opposite of health benefits?
I understand that tradition is a big deal, particularly in Eastern countries. But this specific tradition should be minimized, so as not to risk the health of Japanese citizens. If there was a festival each year where people ate the dolphin meat, it would then not only be an isolated occurrence, but dolphin meat consumption, and therefore mercury consumption would decrease because citizens would not be eating it as much or as frequently.
We must also understand that these animals have feelings just as we humans do (yeah, I'm a hippie, I know). It might be a hard idea to grasp, but these animals live and feel and yes--they have emotions. Not only are these fishermen/hunters cruelly killing some of these animals, but they are also subjecting the survivors to emotional trauma. As Hana pointed out, when these animals are separated from their mother, for example, they can suffer from depression. This can often cause animals to lose weight, and eventually decrease the population size as a whole. So, not only are the hunters directly killing a species by spearing dolphins, but they are also indirectly killing a species by inducing emotional trauma.

Study Abroad

College is the perfect time to be able to travel, particularly at Furman. Furman-sponsored study away programs are covered by tuition, so why not travel for the cost you would be paying anyway?
Personally, I've never left the country, and that is exactly my motivation to do so. While I have my preferences (somewhere I can speak English and be okay, please...), I am willing to travel anywhere, because I want experiences outside of the United States.
I am aiming to study in Edinburgh, Scotland. This program is not only a chance to study away, but also an opportunity to have an internship in a foreign country. I would hope to intern either with a psychiatrist, or with the Scottish parliament, in order to compare US and Scottish mental health policies.
After college, when most former undergraduate students either venture into the work force or into graduate school, there is not as much of an opportunity to travel, particularly for people who plan on having a family.
College is full of so many opportunities that I believe all students should try to take advantage of. Possibly one of the biggest of these opportunities is the chance to leave the United States, learning not only your curriculum, but also the culture and lifestyle of other countries.

Sports and Money

Jack raised a very interesting point in his blog post, asking why athletes should be paid millions of dollars for their hobby, while others enjoy their hobby for no salary at all. Personally, I can (grudgingly) admit that I don't have an athletic bone in my body. I tried to play soccer in middle school, only to face a surgery as well as the more athletic boys on my team making fun of me. These two events led to me putting my cleats up for good. Not only will I never make millions kicking a ball around, but my parents paid for me to play as a child. Sure, this failed attempt at athleticism only left my parents with maybe seventy dollars wasted, but honestly, I think that's a much better option than being paid for a hobby.
If you love doing something, such as playing a sport, I don't think it's such a bad idea to have to pay to perform this hobby, even as a professional. This requires professionals to have another job in order to pay for their hobby. It also eliminates athletes who are only in it for the money, while keeping those who play out of passion, making for a much more meaningful game.
Though this has a huge potential to decrease the level of competition, this might be a good thing for our over-competitive country.
I will admit that this proposal has many gaps and potential disadvantages, such as the lack of sports scholarships that may allow students to get a better education than they would originally be able to afford. In this case, while it is important for students to be acknowledged for their talent as well as academic merit, those who rely wholly on sports scholarships, which may have lower academic standards, may not benefit from a more academically-heavy schools. These students may choose one school over another for monetary reasons, but be better off at another school that has lower academic standards.
This is only an idea, and as it stands, it would not work. But I do believe it is something to consider.

I'm allowed to be a feminist.

I just want to use a blog post to say that, no matter what other students (ahem) may say, there is absolutely nothing wrong with feminism.
Feminism is simply the idea that men and women should be equal.
Currently, there is a wage gap of 23.5%. This means that, for every dollar a man makes, a woman with the same job will make 77 cents.
Currently, women make up 18.3% of Congress, even though they make up approximately 50% of the U.S. population.
This should not be a problem. Men and women should be equal, and that is the entire premise of feminism. I am not talking about radical feminism or "feminazis." I'm not advocating a female takeover. I am not advocating "man-hating." I'll leave that to the radical feminists. I'm not one of them. I am simply advocating equality between these two halves of our country, and of our world--men and women.
Equality is something that has been a prominent issue since the Civil War era. If we give black and white males equal opportunities, but not the same opportunities for their female counterparts, have we really made any progress?
So please, when I post something or write something that you consider a "feminist" topic, just know that you don't need to assume it to be "some outrageous feminist paper." I promise you, if I ever get on the topic of feminism, it's strictly from an "equality" stance. I, too, recognize double standards, and believe we when I say I think they're just as ridiculous as the next person, no matter whether women "benefit" from it.
I just want to see a world where I can make as much as my male counterparts, and my opportunities are just as within my reach as they are for a man with my same level of education and my same work ethic.

Speaking of false accusations...

Take a look at this.

Just reading the first paragraph of that article honestly pisses me off. Believe me, I am quite the feminist, but I will never stand by a woman who falsely accuses somebody of rape. Conor Oberst, upon trying to file a lawsuit for a rape claim against him that was admitted by the "victim" to be false, was criticized--"arguing that it could intimidate real victims of rape and that it promoted the idea of men as victims of false accusations."

Excuse me, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. In South Carolina, the penalty for "aggravated coercion" is up to 20 years in prison. While someone who has been falsely accused of rape is spending up to 20 years among fellow inmates, the so-called "victim" roams free and is seen as a hero for speaking up.

Oberst was completely justified in filing a lawsuit, rather than submit to not only the media backlash, but also jail time. Why would anyone simply want to give in to going to prison for something that they have not done?

As far as this notion that "women never lie," I will gladly be the first to say that, as a woman, I lie on a daily basis. Everybody lies, men and women alike. So, to the fellow feminists out there, let's keep that painfully false idea out of our minds.

This article points out that, though the percentage of false reports of all rape reports is only, it's still 2 of every 100 rape reports. This video, which is noted in the article, reminds us that this statistic only applies to rape reports, and does not include rape accusations, such as Joanie Faircloth's written accusation of Oberst.

I recognize that rape is a serious issue, and that any accusations should be treated as such, but this does not mean that we should blindly believe any accusations that we may hear about, particularly those in the media. Many "victims" of celebrity rape may be likely to be simply looking for attention from the media, but as these claims must be taken seriously, a celebrity's reputation could be seriously damaged even though the claim may not be true.

This applies to your average Joes as well. Though false "victims" may not be looking for fame, there's always money involved in a lawsuit. And isn't money what we all want?

So, rapists are being put in prison for their crime (and as long as they truly are rapists, they certainly deserve it), but what about the false accusers? They are taking the money and time away from others to do a rape test, an investigation, a trial, all for what? To find out (maybe) that it's been a ruse the whole time? That simply cannot go unpunished.

It's like the boy who cried wolf. Everyone comes running when a woman yells "rape," but once she created an ordeal by lying, no one will be likely to believe her. And unfortunately, she may keep yelling it until this happens. Why waste the time and money for multiple false reports when she can simply "learn her lesson" the first time around through time in a cell? The cost of keeping her locked up for a period of time could potentially save the money and time that would go into the future trials with not only her, but also other people. Once people see that there is indeed a punishment for this wrongdoing, they will too be less likely to do the same crime. If there is no punishment, there is no legal incentive to do the right thing--tell the truth.

Why hasn't this been brought up yet...?

"More than 4% of inmates sentenced to death in the United States are probably innocent." -Huffington Post, April 2014

In 2014 alone, 35 Americans were executed under the death penalty. According to this statistic in Huffington Post, approximately one or two (1.4 to be exact) of those people are statistically likely to be innocent.

Let's extend that to the beginning of the century. Between 2000 and 2014, 796 people have been executed in the United States as a result of capital punishment. Statistically, then, 31 or 32 (31.84, exactly) people have been falsely executed. This affects 32 people, 32 families, and most likely more than 32 friends.

Looking at the blog posts this week, there has been much talk about religion, economics, and international conflict. While these are all very important when taking a stance on capital punishment, we can't neglect to look at the fallacies that are bound to occur in the court process. It is not unheard of for the courts to falsely accuse someone of a crime. And it would honestly suck having to spend years in prison because of a crime that you didn't commit, but capital punishment is such a permanent court decision.

Though it can take decades to have a felon injected, it could potentially take longer for someone to figure out that this "felon" is innocent. Once they're injected, that's it. It's over.

I would like to say that we can solve this problem by attempting to improve the accuracy in court, but this is just too naive. Human error and subjectivity are too big in decision-making for them to be eliminated. Instead, we must take a look at the punishments and "solutions" we are utilizing.

I will stand on the side of those (potentially) 32 innocents. We cannot keep killing this percentage of innocent inmates.

Fox News: Fairly Unbalanced (4 Feb 2015)

Disclaimer: I am a liberal. This post will most likely contain bias.
The difference between me and Fox News? I don’t blatantly deny my bias.

Do you remember the “telephone game” from elementary school? The concept is simple: someone whispers some silly sentence to someone else, and by the time it gets back to where it started, it’s turned into even sillier nonsense that is no where near what the original thought was.

Now take this concept and expand it to a national (or even international) level. For example, the original story: Michelle Obama didn’t wear a headscarf in Saudi Arabia, since it is not required for foreigners to wear them; what gets thrown back at us: Michelle Obama is disrespectful of other cultures and hates Saudi Arabia.

This is how the media works–any form of media. They all have bias. The individual people who work for news corporations have their own views, and these views are often reflected in their work. Hence, news stories, especially those having to do with politics, will generally lean to a given side or way of thinking, and this varies with each media outlet. This is what happens when humans, who are prone to bias and error, run the media.

How does Fox News play into this? Simple–Fox News is a media outlet, so the corporation is not magically immune to this inevitable bias. In fact, many (including Seth Ackerman) have pegged Fox as one of the most biased media outlets, claiming that it leans strongly to the right. Quite frankly, this claim isn’t too far-fetched.

All I ask is that we stop giving Fox News some sense of purity. Nothing makes me more angry than seeing “Fair and Balanced” used to describe a news outlet, even if the slogan were used for a left-wing corporation, such as CNN or MSNBC.

So repeat after me: “Every news outlet has bias. Every news outlet, to some extent, leans to one side.” Ahh, thank you for helping to prevent my impending aneurysm.
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Comments from old blog:

Matthew: It’s definitely important to recognize the inevitable presence of bias in news outlets, or in any other communication of info by humans. Equally important, I would think, is avoiding the temptation to imply a false equivalence between various outlets in this regard, as many reasonable people do in an attempt to portray themselves as unbiased. All news is created imperfect, but no equally so.

You raise an interesting point, in that Fox News seems more committed than anyone else to telling their audience, quite explicitly, how fair and balanced and without spin their coverage is. Maybe this is part of their polarizing nature, and why Americans consistently consider them either the most or least trustworthy source of information. All I know is, I’ve never seen such declarations of “WE ARE NOT BEING BIASED” from so-called ‘serious’ broadcasters, like BBC, PBS, NPR, etc.