Discuss DISCRIMINATION

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Based on the definitions and interpretations given above, do remember the differences between discrimination and prejudice and also how stereotypes play a part. Remember that prejudice is an attitude whereas discrimination is the outward behaviour or actions based on those prejudicial attitudes - something like Syafiqah's definition.

Social Media - Lethal invasion of Privacy

If you're 20 years old or younger, you probably grew up using computers, cellphones, iPods and Facebook. Photos, for you, are images not necessarily printed on paper. CDs are old hat. You take digital -- digital everything -- for granted.

In such a world, how easy is it to record and be recorded, to share your -- or someone else's -- most intimate secrets by posting them on the Web? All too easy.

Easy gathering and distribution of information are hallmarks of the digital age. They played out all too disastrously for first-year Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi.

Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge in New York on Sept. 22, three days after roommate Dharun Ravi, 18, allegedly made and streamed online a secret video of an intimate encounter between Clementi and another man.

Clementi's body was identified Sept. 29. Ravi and Rutgers freshman Molly Wei, also 18, have been charged with invading his privacy, and Middlesex County, N.J., prosecutors say bias-crime charges are possible.

Clementi even said farewell via Facebook: "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry."

Clementi's death has spurred fierce debate, on and off campus and on the Internet, about social media, changing notions of privacy, and whether or not what happened was a crime.

Emily Nussbaum, frequent writer on social media and privacy issues and editor at large for New York magazine, said, "I am completely baffled about why people don't make a distinction between what you do and do not post."

But she also sees three important forces at work in this story: "The availability and ease of the technology; the growing normalcy of porn, especially the rise of amateur porn, in which you post sexual images of yourself or others, and the social networking change in people's attitude toward privacy."

Neil Bernstein is an adolescent psychologist in Washington and author of "How To Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to Do If You Can't." He sees two trends converging: the "dilution of intimacy" brought about by the new media, and what he calls "behavior contagion," or the tendency of people to do what those around them are doing.

The Web can connect people in strong, healthy ways, Bernstein said. But the dark side is that our notion of intimacy may be diluted.

"There's a decreased empathy that sometimes comes with social media," he said. "Because they're online, people will consider themselves intimate with people they don't really know at all. And this has an impact on relationships."

Then there's "behavior contagion." All around you, your friends and acquaintances post information once thought "private": names of boy- or girlfriends, social plans, secrets.

Technology does change attitudes, and fast. "When phones became cameras," Nussbaum said, "every friend you had became your paparazzo. All the previous ethical boundaries about taking photos of someone else without express permission, which used to be seen as an invasion of privacy -- that's all but gone now."

Which leaves all of us vulnerable. Rob D'Ovidio, associate professor of criminal justice in the department of culture and communications at Philadelphia's Drexel University, says that low-cost, miniaturized recording technology is "entering the widespread public domain."

In the past, we needed to worry only about Big Brother: government and corporate entities with the power to gather and manipulate private info. "Now," said D'Ovidio, "we're in the era where we have to watch everyone, including other consumers, our colleagues, our classmates -- we have to watch everyone from now on.

"Big Brother has trickled down to the Everyperson."

Opportunity -- and temptation -- to misuse social media are everywhere. "The will to betray, the will to deceive, is out there," said Gary T. Marx, professor emeritus of social science at MIT. Social media simply make it easier.

Also involved is the culture of "pranking," with its overtones of humiliation, harassment and bullying. According to the Associated Press, since 2003 in the United States at least a dozen children or young adults between 11 and 18 have killed themselves after some form of cyberbullying. Perhaps best known is the case of 13-year-old Megan Meier of Dardenne Prairie, Mo., who hanged herself in 2006 after getting MySpace messages supposedly from a boy breaking up with her. The messages were really sent by the mother of a friend.

Much of the Internet debate focuses on whether what happened to Clementi amounts to a hate-crime against gays. Hayley Gorenberg, an attorney with Lambda Legal, a national gay-rights organization, said she was "terribly saddened" but not at all shocked to learn of Clementi's death.

"We know the rates of suicide among LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) youth who do not feel supported are sky-high," she said. "Social media can be a fantastic source of support for youth who feel isolated, but the potential is there for depersonalization that removes perpetrators from the face-to-face interaction."

Based on an article in Times Union, a US-based online newspaper.

Where is GP in the world?

Its obvious that GP is about social and worldly issues. So please leave your link of your article that reflects those topics and issues in the comments below.

Privilege

Below is a song by Incubus. What do you make out the song to be? Support it by referencing to the lyrics. The audio is playing on the iPod at the right. If you are distracted by the 'moving' images , just choose the next track (it contains no images).

Isn't it strange that a gift could be an enemy?
Isn't it weird that a privilege could feel like a chore?
Maybe it's me but this line isn't going anywhere,
maybe if we looked hard enough, we could find a backdoor.
(find yourself a backdoor).

I see you in line, dragging your feet
you have my sympathy.
The day you were born, you were born free.
That is your privilege. (chorus)

Isn't it strange that the man standing in front of me
doesn't have a clue why he's waiting, or what he is waiting for?
Maybe it's me, but i'm sick of wasting energy.
Maybe if i look in my heart I could find a backdoor.
(Find yourself a backdoor).

I see you in line, dragging your feet
you have my sympathy.
The day you were born, you were born free.
That is your
That is your privilege.

(Find yourself a backdoor).

I see you in line, dragging your feet
you have my sympathy.
The day you were born, you were born free.
That is your privilege. *2

Is Singapore the worst environmental offender?

ST - A NATIONAL University of Singapore (NUS) study which ranked Singapore as the worst environmental offender among 179 countries has drawn a sharp response from the Government, but its authors are standing by it.

The study, jointly done by NUS and the University of Adelaide, found that Singapore's headlong rush into developing a modern megalopolis over the last 30 years had taken a terrible toll on its natural environment.

The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources, however, has slammed the 16-page paper - which looks at relative environmental impact of countries - for not taking into account the 'unique circumstances of each country'.

Responding to queries from The Straits Times, a ministry spokesman said that the study was based on a proportional environmental impact index, which is defined only in terms of total land area.

'As such, countries with limited land size which have high intensity of land use would be necessarily disadvantaged in this proportional index,' said the spokesman.

'Correspondingly, the main indices which contributed to Singapore's poor ranking were contingent on total land area. For example, natural habitat conversion, which is the area of human-modified land divided by total land area, unfairly penalises Singapore's high urban density.'

In response, Professor Corey Bradshaw, 38, director of ecological modelling at the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and one of the paper's three authors, was adamant that the data spoke for itself.

'We didn't make it up,' he said. 'It's publicly available data so anyone can look at this.'

The study, which took about three years to complete, was published by peer-reviewed online science journal PLoS ONE.

Professor Navjot Sodhi, 48, from the NUS department of biological sciences and co-author of the paper, said Singapore's rapid development in the last 30 years has seen it lose 90 per cent of its forest, 67 per cent of its birds, about 40 per cent of its mammals and 5 per cent of its amphibians and reptiles.

The study is thought to be the first in the world to adopt a new rating system which looks only at environmental indicators such as forest loss, natural habitat conversion, marine captures, carbon emissions and biodiversity.

As the index focuses on modern environmental impact, it 'ignores some elements of historical degradation such as deforestation in Europe', the authors said in the paper. It therefore 'might penalise developing nations more heavily'.

Although a country like Brazil, for example, has chopped down more rain-forests, Singapore, proportional to its size, has wreaked greater destruction as nearly all its forests have made way for urbanisation, explained Prof Bradshaw.

He added: 'Singapore's development over the last 20 to 30 years has meant that it has done the worst damage to its environment.'

Developing and developed nations such as South Korea, Qatar, Kuwait, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and the Netherlands were also penalised by the proportional index.

While Singapore fared poorly in terms of proportional environmental impact, it is too small to figure in terms of global or absolute environmental impact. For that, the 10 worst countries are: Brazil, the United States, China, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, India, Russia, Australia and Peru.

The authors conceded that Singapore was something of an anomaly as it is a city state, and a fairer comparison would be between it and other cities such as New York City and Hong Kong.

The negative rating is not the first Singapore has received in environmental studies.

The Republic has frequently been cited as having one of the highest per capita carbon emissions globally by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which provides energy statistics to the US government, factoring in data such as carbon emissions from bunker fuel, aviation and refining processes.

Latest EIA data taken in 2006 indicated that Singapore emitted 141 million tonnes of carbon emissions, ranking it as the 33rd-highest emitter of greenhouse gases among 215 countries.

Singapore - which adopts a measurement standard that does not include bunker fuel, aviation and refining emissions, which is in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidelines - puts its own carbon emissions figure as 40 million tonnes.

In this year's Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which ranks 163 countries on both environmental public health and ecosystem vitality, Singapore did better, coming in 28th with 69.6 points. Iceland fared the best with a score of 93.5 and Sierra Leone came in last with 32.1.

Speaking to leaders at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December last year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong defended Singapore's environmental record, saying it had taken environmental issues seriously since its independence more than 44 years ago.

He said Singapore had recently set a voluntary and domestically funded target to reduce emission growth by 16 per cent from business-as-usual levels by 2020, subject to a globally binding climate change deal.

He described this as 'a substantial commitment which will entail significant economic and social costs'.

Source: Straits Times

What is Emo?

Is fall out boy emo? Does wearing eyeliner and black clothes make you emo? Click on the picture to see the fashion requirements of an emo.

See what these people think what emo is? Click me!

How emo are you? Find out here...

1. Your girlfriend just broke up with you. Do you...
a. Find another girl
b. Weep
c. Write a song about it

2. How many times a day do you cry?
a. 5-7
b. 8-11
c. As many times as The Killers diss Pete Wentz

3. Who is in your MySpace top 8?
a. Panic! At The Disco
b. Top 8 is so yesterday. I have 16.
c. My friends from the Fall Out Boy fan club

4. Where do you buy your pants?
a. Hot Topic
b. In the women's department
c. I raid my little sister's closet

5. How many piercings do you have?
a. 2
b. 3-4
c. 3 for every part of my face

6. How many pairs of Converse shoes do you own?
a. One for every mood I might go through
b. One for every band in the Honda Civic Tour
c. One for every friend on MySpace

7. Your glasses are...
a. Prescription
b. Buddy Holly via Rivers Cuomo
c. Not coming off unless I can get My Chemical Romance to sign them

8. Your hair is...
a. Dyed black
b. Full of product
c. Impairing my vision

9. How often do you change your MySpace picture?
a. Ten times a day
b. Every day after TRL
c. Not until the next 30 Seconds To Mars concert

10. I save money by...
a. Cutting my own hair
b. Shopping at thrift stores
c. Never spending more than $15 on a concert

Mostly A's
You are just barely emo.
Stop being such a poser.

Mostly B's
You are decidedly emo. You might not squeeze into little girls' pants, but you still know the importance of a good cry.

Mostly C's
If Pete Wentz, Brendon Urie and Gerard Way walked into a bar, you'd still the most emo person in the room.

Emo = Suicide ? ?

This article reports that a suicide of a 13 year-old girl in the States is linked to the 'emo' culture. Do you agree?

Click on the article for the full report.

Emo fans fight back....

Emo fans here defend themselves....do you feel that the music that you might be listening is to be blamed for Hannah's death?

Click on the pic for the full report.

Plastic Surgery Addiction - A Body Image Problem Within Our Society

Despite the prevalence of beautiful plus size models, and movements to boost self-esteem, many women and young girls are preoccupied with negative feelings about their body image. Moreover, with the onslaught of reality programs documenting plastic surgeries, some people rely on a knife to achieve their ideal appearance.

Plastic or cosmetic surgery is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, facial and body injuries may cause a deformity, which can only be corrected by means of plastic surgery. Additionally, cosmetic surgery can be a lifesaver in the case of extreme obesity. On the flip side, some people – especially females – are too consumed with looking pretty and having the perfect body. Because the perfect body is unachievable, these people may have continual plastic surgeries with hopes of finding personal satisfaction. To onlookers, these persons are beautiful. In spite of that, an unrealistic view of their body says otherwise.

Unfortunately, two-thirds of plastic surgery patients are repeat patients. Having the initial cosmetic surgery is the hard part. However, once the first surgery is complete, it is easy for the patient to seek more enhancements. Typical plastic surgery procedures include breast augmentations, nose jobs, cheek implants, liposuction, and so forth. Granted, not everyone who has more than one plastic surgery is addicted. Growing up, some people have a healthy dislike of certain body parts. Perhaps they have an unsightly nose. These persons resolve to correct the dislike when funds are available. On the other hand, persons addicted to cosmetic surgery demonstrate a measure of psychological problems.

To a certain degree, everyone is self-conscious and has insecurities. Yet, some people suffer from a condition known as body dysmorphic disorder. Persons with this condition can be extremely good-looking, but view themselves as ugly. They equate happiness with beauty. Thus, to achieve a happy state, they undergo repeated cosmetic surgeries. Unfortunately, people with this disorder are never satisfied with their appearance. Hence, cosmetic surgeries are never-ending.

Signs of Cosmetic/Plastic Surgery Addiction

Plastic surgery addictions are usually easy to detect. Obviously, patients who have had countless cosmetic surgeries, either on the same body part or on different body parts, are typical addicts.

Addicts commonly obsess about specific body parts of an admired celebrity. For example, a patient may request Angelina Jolie's lips, Jennifer Lopez's backside (butt implants), Naomi Campbell's cheekbones, and so forth. Plastic surgery addicts consider these celebrities the epitome of beauty, and will go to any lengths to achieve their desired qualities. Yet, addicts fail to realize that each person has unique features, and trying to tailor our looks behind someone else's is a recipe for disaster.

Ethics Code

Do plastic surgeons contribute to plastic surgery addictions? The answer to this question depends largely on who is asked. Granted, plastic surgeon’s primary role is to perform surgery, and not provide counsel to persons suffering from a psychological problem. Still, if a surgeon detects a destructive pattern, isn't refusing to perform an operation in the best interest of the patient? Rather than support multiple cosmetic surgeries, physician should decline, and refer the patient to an excellent psychologist.

By V.C. Higuera, published Aug 18, 2006 (http://www.associatedcontent.com)