Category: Wildwood

PTSD contagious- wildwood

Granted, diagnosing PTSD is a tricky thing.

 -Claiming diagnosing the disease being discussed in the article is not easy and opens the door up to the discussion of mistreatments and how that could affect the patients way of coping with the disease.

“I guess we’re just used to dealing with people with more severe injuries,” a VA nurse once told Brannan upon seeing Caleb.

–The nurse makes a blanket claim saying that mental injuries are just something to scoff at and immediately brush off the shoulder, not matter the severity.

Secondary traumatic stress has been documented in the spouses of veterans with PTSD from Vietnam

-Claim does not go into detail about how PTSD was documented or the severity of the disease.

– Does not discuss the backgrounds of the soldiers nor their wives, making assumption that the disorder came from war

Certainly she seems better than some other PTSD vets’ kids Brannan knows, who scream and sob and rock back and forth at the sound of a single loud noise, or who try to commit suicide even before they’re out of middle school

–Very strong claim about other children in PTSD ridden families

-Offers no information besides saying children tried to kill themselves

-Do not know the background about these certain kids or how many suffer to this extent

Stone Money-wildwood89

The thought of money nowadays seems so simplistic and normal. Having a job naturally comes with having a paycheck and that paycheck pays bills and pays for things that people need to live. Going out with friends or buying the new iPhone all happens because of having money. When somebody does work for their respective company, that company, twice a month deposits money into the workers bank account. That worker then is able to pay for their living expenses. But what did the company actually give the worker? Say it’s a construction business and the employee built a shed, the shed is a physical object, it is in a backyard somewhere where a person can touch it and use it. That shed becomes a tangible asset that the customer can now use. All the employee received in return is a higher number in their bank account that is supposed to represent their savings. A made-up number in a bank account is all that the employee receives after doing manual labor for somebody else. Sweat and hard work translates to receiving a green piece of paper that you trust represents something you can use again in the future. Again, it seems so basic and crude but when you stop to think about it, it makes one wonder how it all came about.

 

After reflecting on a piece by Milton Friedman, “The Island of Stone Money,” the idea of using a giant piece of limestone as a form of currency seems so lucrative, but in actuality, makes more sense than modern day banking. In the article, the author discusses that in the early 1900s, an island of natives, called Yap, on the Caroline Islands, located in Micronesia, had an extremely interesting monetary system where they used stone as currency. This stone was nothing ordinary, these were massive stones with a hole in the middle that a pole could be inserted and wheeled around, making for easier transport. Some stones were so historic and widely talked about, it turned into folktale and the heirs of such stone were living lavish lives, based on the rumors of their family owning it. Some families have never seen their stone, for some was lost years before, but the community still accepted them as wealthy. When the people of Yap were in debt, the government would send teams out to the people in debt and mark their stones with thick black paint, marking an “x” on it until the debt it paid. When the stones had an x painted on it, the community no longer considered that as a sign of wealth and would even shun the family with an x painted on their limestone. As soon as the debt was paid, the government would send out another team, removing the mark. The fact that the community based their belief off of a gigantic stone and an x, says all you need to know about the monetary system.
A sophomoric idea I had when I was little and just starting to understand the idea of having to pay for things I want, was to simply print more money. This was obviously before I even heard the word inflation. After a family trip to the United States Mint, it further backed my idea of using the massive, loud, shiny machines to just print more dollar bills so that everyone has a little more in their pockets. After growing up and realizing it is not that simple, I was very pleased that the government did not follow my lead and print the money.

 

After listening to a segment of an NPR broadcast regarding an economic crisis in Brazil in the 1950s and an unprecedented inflation rate which crippled the economy, it struck me how easily inflation could handicap a population. The inflation crisis continued for 5 decades until the government needed a new idea, something to change the system. The Brazilian government hired four experts and gave them free range to save the bleeding economy. They introduced a new form of currency, one where the population could believe in, and new legislation which slowed down the money printing presses. After a short while, their new procedures actually worked, and once disastrous economy started to level off and stabilize. After analyzing where they went wrong and what caused the multiple decade long economic downturn, they realized that the excess of money floating around the economy caused the money to lose value at an extreme rate. Printing more money to build, buy and expand an economy is not the answer.

 

Another segment in the NPR broadcast discusses the United States and the history of where the modern-day banking has got its shape. All superpowers have a central bank that controls the inflow and outflow of its currency, and the United States central bank is called the Federal Reserve. The fed does what is right for the economy free of political restraints, regardless on which side of the aisle the Fed President votes. The presidents of the different banks are located in 12 different districts and they vote every 6 weeks on whether or not it is a smart decision to add more money into the economy. Pumping more money into the economy means the ease of lending more money to businesses and expansion of the economy but be weary of inflation rates. The publics’ fear of their money losing value is a huge factor when determining to print new money. If the population is losing trust in their economic leaders, they may want to cash out of the banks and have their money in their possession which could cause a ripple effect across not only the nation, but the globe. The problem with that is, there may not be enough physical money for everyone to “cash out.” Money nowadays is just information, numbers on a receipt that Americans trust will be there when they need it. The banks are just revolving doors for cash which they lend out, so they can make their money.

The world has certainly come a long way from the early days of discovering fire to discovering electricity to eradicating certain diseases from our crowded planet, but have we really come a long way in our monetary system? What has changed? We still use symbols of wealth to represent our hard work and those symbols nowadays are nothing more than a green piece of fabric. Any day now could be another financial crisis and the question will sure to be asked, do we need more money?

 

 

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Counterintuitive, Stanford University, Feb. 1991, https://counterintuitive2015.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf

Glass, Ira. “The Invention of Money.” This American Life, 19 Feb. 2018, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money.

Goldstein, Jacob. “The Invention of ‘The Economy.” National Public Radio, February 28, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/02/28/283477546/the-invention-of-the-economy

 

My hypothesis—Wildwood

  1. Executive power
  2. Executive power and the ease of overreach
  3. Overreach and new regulations to maintain checks and  balances
  4. Ways executive power is abused and what constitutes overreach
  5. Ways to emphasize limitations on the privilege and close loopholes
  6. Ways executive power is abused and the pathway for Congress could take to keep better checks and balances on the policy

Summaries—Wildwood

  1. Drug Addictions

It seems counterintuitive that maybe the best way to curb the spike of drug addiction is to give the most addicted, free prescriptions of heroin. Now by no stretch of the imagination does  this insist on making the drug free or legal to the regular population, but to help facilitate the process of which the drug is consumed. Cities across Europe and Vancouver thought of the idea to create areas where addicts could use heroin. Insite in Vancouver is an area where only 26 approved users who are of the most addicted, are allowed to come and use heroin. The addicts there receive the tools they need to do the drug meanwhile are under constant supervision from nurses and medical professionals incase something ought to go wrong. Believe it or not, the addicts also receive free prescriptions for some of the best cut heroin on the planet.

This idea stemmed from experiments when heroin alternatives were used as a replacement for the real thing, that ultimately failed. The idea of giving hopeless addicts free heroin is that it keeps them off of the street, committing violent crimes to feed the addiction. Addicts either get free heroin from the city or they burglarize vehicles and rob the innocent to get the drugs they crave. It could be considered blackmail but if they are only harming themselves, that in itself is a small win. The article quotes “…let’s provide you with heroin so you are the least dangerous drug addict you can possibly be.”

Programs across Europe have successfully helped hopeless addicts by keeping them off of the street, which is where Vancouver got the idea. Critics of the Insite program think the city is giving up on the addicts and hiding behind the excuse of the term “hopelessly addicted,” in a way to attempt to justify killing them. 

2. Armored Planes

It seems counterintuitive that the best way to armor a war plane, may be to put armor where bullets did not hit. When a plane is struck by gunfire and riddled with bullet holes, it may either crash due to the damage or safely make it back to the air base. If it crashes, then so be it, the plane wasn’t able to handle the apparent extreme damage. But if the plane is able to make it back to the airbase and land safely, that aircraft needs to be examined. When looking at the plane, and all of the holes due to the barrage of gun fire it took, the first thought may be to put armor on it and concentrate the armor where the holes are. But according to Hungarian-born mathematician Abraham Wald, he stated it would be counter productive to armor the plane where it was hit, yet armor the plane where it was not hit.

The plane was able to return safely with the damage, but the ones that do not return must of received damage in different places. One might think just to armor the entire plane but planes cannot be too heavy or else they will lose things such as maneuverability and speed, so adding weight in places they don’t need too it paramount. The weight of the armor alone needed to defend against an anti aircraft weapon would already be extremely heavy. Cutting weight means cutting cost and cutting cost would make this already wild idea, an economically friendly one as well. By armoring aircrafts and increasing the likelihood of them returning, means the government will not have to shell out the billions of dollars that it already does for a new plane every time one of the crafts come under heavy fire. 

3. Multi vitamins

It seems counterintuitive that multi vitamins do more harm than good when consumed. A seemingly honest and ever growing 28 billion dollar a year industry such as the vitamin industry could be robbing those trying to better themselves blind. Nearly one third in all Americans regularly take a multi vitamin although it may not be worth it.

A 2009 study, published in “Archives of Internal Medicine,” and a 2011 study proved that taking a multi on a daily basis does not necessarily ward off any disease that the billion dollar industry claims it does. Another study proves that typical multi users are more likely to receive their quota of vitamins through their normal food intake than those who do not take a multi. When someone gets their normal vitamin intake from their diet, and adds a multi to their day, it could push them over their recommended limits of each vitamin, causing harm instead of good.  Different types of diseases one could be exposed too when consuming too many vitamins is when too much iron is taken, it could result in an increased risk of heart disease. Pregnant women who also use a multi containing vitamin A could very well boost the chance of birth defects.

Much to the dismay of the manufactures, politicians are joining the fight of mandating an honest label on supplements warning of health risks that have been proven scientifically. Current labeling is not as it seems. An outside agency conducted a test on 60 common multivitamins and found that they are plagued with faulty info. For example, one label on a certain gummy multi vitamin for children exceeded the upper daily limits of vitamin A and zinc, which could prove harmful, as well as an adult multi which was double the recommended dosage of vitamin A. Doctors suggest to healthy eaters to stop worrying about multi vitamins while picky eaters should remain conscious and think about taking a multi to round out their diets.