Category: Authors SP18

PTSD Claims – picklerick

08

Brannan sent Katie to the school therapist, once. She hasn’t seen any other therapist, or a therapist trained to deal with PTSD

—”Once” makes me think that Brennan had not tried very hard to get help for her daughter. If she was really worried she would’ve brought her to the therapist a lot more than once.

—”She hasn’t seen any other therapist” reinforces Brennan’s lack of willingness to get help for Katie.

Brannan knows what a difference that makes, since the volunteer therapist she tried briefly herself spent more time asking her to explain a “bad PTSD day” than how Caleb’s symptoms were affecting the family.

—”what a difference” is used sarcastically to state how the therapist made no impact on Katie’s behavioral problems.

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. Caleb spends enough time worrying that he’s messing up his kid without a doctor saying so.

—”Certainly she seems better than some other PTSD vets’ kids Brannan knows” means that Brennan must know many other parents with kids who have behavioral problems similar to, or worse than, Katie’s. This also reveals that this issue is not specific Brennan’s family, and that this is a normal occurrence within post-war households.

—”try to commit suicide even before they’re out of middle school” means that it’s normals for children in families with PTSD to attempt to commit suicide at an abnormally young age.

—”Caleb spends enough time worrying that he’s messing up his kid without a doctor saying so” let’s me know that Caleb is worried about Katies mental state and it doesn’t help when the doctors tell him what he already knows.

Brannan is a force of keeping her family together. She sleeps a maximum of five hours a night, keeps herself going with fast food and energy drinks, gets Katie to and from school and to tap dance and art, where Katie produces some startlingly impressive canvases, bright swirling shapes bisected by and intersected with other swaths of color, bold, intricate.

—”Brannan is a force of keeping her family together” reveals that the family needs Brennan, and without her, the family would fall apart.

—”keeps herself going with fast food and energy drinks” shows how Brennan doesn’t have time to eat healthy and take care of herself properly because she is too busy providing care for her family.

—”startlingly impressive canvases” shows that one wouldn’t expect Brennan to have such a creative talent due the issues she is forced to deal with on a daily basis.

She used the skills she learned as an assistant to a state Supreme Court justice and running a small newspaper to navigate Caleb’s maze of paperwork with the VA, and the paperwork for the bankruptcy they had to declare while they were waiting years for his disability benefits to come through.

—”maze of paperwork” means that the VA gives Brennan a lot of confusing and unnecessary paperwork.

—”bankruptcy they had to declare” means that they did’t want to declare bankruptcy, but were forced to because Caleb’s disability benefits took so long to come through.

She also works for the VA now, essentially, having been—after a good deal more complicated paperwork, visits, and assessments—enrolled in its new caregiver program, which can pay spouses or other family members of disabled vets who have to take care of them full time, in Brannan’s case $400 a week.

—”after a good deal more complicated paperwork, visits, and assessments” shows how the VA gave Brennan even more hassle and paperwork when she decided to become part of their caregiver program.

Stone money—paTRicKStar

As I listened to the story of the people of yap, I tried to compare their curriency with ours.  The people the yap use form of currency that involves limestones.  These limestones are very heavy and are and abnormally large for currency. The way these limestones were acquired  was athe people of the yap would travel to a nearby island full of them. Upon arriving, they basically pick up the limestone put it on their raft sell back to their island and gain this form of currency. Now people wouldn’t just trade this limestone currency for just anything. They were mostly used for big purchases. Now compared to modern day society, our societies curriency is paper money. The paper money we have is back by gold. In the past we used to trade with gold and silver. For us hearing people are trading giant stones as currency sounds absurd. But to the people of yap these stones are worth it. Money is a human invention that  had a set value which killed off trading. Before money we would trade goods and commodities for other goods and services.

The invention of money just makes sense to me. It makes it portable, equal and universal. What I mean by this is we no longer have to barter good everyone knows the set amount. They understand the value of it and it could be used internationally. While listening to the podcast I was intrigued yet confused because with the people of yap you can have the value of the curriency without having the currency present. This idea blows my mind.

Now I’m our society we have banks to prove our curriency and show how much money we have. Although our curriencys are different and the way we handle our money is odd to the people of yap. Our main concepts are similar. Money, stone, checks and all forms of curriency are worth nothing without us giving value to these items. In our society today money controls everything ;money is power. The amount of money you have determines which class you are in our society. So essentially money does have a bigger role than just paper and a way to barter. Your net worth and the amount money you have does matter.

The reason  money has power is because we give it it’s worth. Think of it like the people of the yap they gave an in adamant object just like we did to paper money , value. Therefore setting a standard for people to except this idea.   The only difference between us and the people of the app is we made our money portable, tangible, and international. Our money can be used in exchange worldwide., Have a set value, NV easy to transport.  With the people you have the only problem with their ideas of currency was that you didn’t need to lose the currency to lose your value I could handle that I’m out of value of the asset without having the ass it with me which is a little hard to understand but it seems very absurd how can you be rich but have no money this is what we said fourth ofthe change

After listening  to the  podcast called how fake funny Siri Brazil. I was mostly confused with the concept. The narrator talked about how inflation was high and in reality kept increasing daily. What confused me was when they tried to get people to spend money to boost the economy by  lying to them to think that their money did have value when in fact inflation was so high it was worth less. I understand that people were scared to buy since they though maybe keeping their money would be safer but that would make the economy worse. How they tried to lie to people confused me.

Recently I’ve heard a lot of discussion on the news involving cryptocurrency called bitcoin. With this interesting topic of stone money. I am eager to learn more about our newest form of currency and see how it does.

PTSD Claims-Dohertyk9

A09

1. “At home after school, she makes Katie a pancake snack and then, while Katie shows me the website for a summer camp that teaches military spy skills, Brannan gets back to work.”

  • Pancake snack- This reminds the reader/listener that Katie seems to always eat some type of “pancake snack”.
  • Summer camp- This shows that Katie is influenced by her father’s service and deliberately searches for information on her own to find the summer camp.
  • “Brannan gets back to work”- A reminder to the reader/listener that Brannan is constantly working.

2. “Brannan founded the organization in 2007, after panicked Googling led her to the website of Vietnam Veteran Wives (VVW) when Caleb returned from his second tour.”

  • “Brannan founded the organization in 2007”- Factual Claim
  • Panicked- Emphasis on Brannan’s stress and fear at the problems she was experiencing with her husband.
  • Second Tour- Reminds the reader that Caleb only started experiencing the worse symptoms of PTSD after his second tour.

3. “Life after the first tour had been pretty normal.”

  • Life- Shows that Caleb’s PTSD affected his family’s entire life.
  • “After the first tour”- Implies that the second tour made the real difference.
  • “Pretty normal”- Shows that she considered Caleb’s behavior to be odd, but not enough to be considered very abnormal.

4. “‘Things were a little…off,’ Caleb was edgy, distant, but he did not forget entire conversations minutes later, did not have to wait for a stable mental-health day and good moment between medication doses to be intimate with his wife…”

  • Off- She admits that Caleb was not acting like his usual self, and that it was affecting “things”.
  • But- She states Caleb’s behavior in a negative way, but she is only concerned with comparing it with his symptoms after the second tour.
  • This sentence emphasizes how Caleb’s symptoms have taken a turn for the worse, comparing his behavior after his first tour with his now pervasive symptoms.
  • “wait for a stable mental-health day and good moment between medication doses”. This statement outlines how rare the stable day and good moment between doses are.

5. “…and then when he finally tried, pray to Christ for one of the times when it’s good sex, not one of the times when a car door slams outside and triggers him, or the emotion becomes so unbearable that he freezes, gets up, and walks wordlessly out the door.”

  • Finally- Shows how long it is before the stable day and good moment between doses.
  • “pray to Christ”- shows his desperation for a moment without getting triggered.
  • “when a car door slams outside and triggers him, or the emotion becomes so unbearable”- This shows just how easy it is for his environment to trigger him.
  • Wordlessly- Makes it clear that Caleb is incapable of even explaining or apologizing for his actions.

6. “All that didn’t happen until after the second tour.”

  • A reminder to the reader that Caleb’s symptoms severely worsened after the second tour.

7. “Brannan was in a terrible place, she says-until she talked to Danna Hughes, founder of VVW.”

  • “Danna Hughes, founder of VVW”- Factual Claim
  • Terrible- Explains that Brannan is severely affected by her husband’s trauma.
  • “until she talked to Danna Hughes”- shows how much Danna Hughes helped Brannan

8. “Danna had been through the exact same turmoil, decades ago, and had opened a center to help get Vietnam vets benefits and educate their spouses and communities about their condition.”

  • Turmoil- Shows how messy it is to try to handle a situation with an immediate family member or spouse with PTSD.

9. “‘What choice do I have?’ Brannan asks about running her own organization. ‘This is the only reason I am well.'”

  • “‘What choice do I have?'”- This shows just how hopeless and trapped Brannan feels. It implies that she feels that she has no other option.
  • “the only reason I am well”- This puts her situation into perspective, showing how the organization serves as an outlet for her in her tumultuous life.

10. “‘People care when you tell them. They just don’t know. They want to help and they want to understand, so I just have to keep going and educating.'”

  • “‘They just don’t know'”- She reminds the reader that for people who have never seen signs of PTSD, it is a mystery.
  • “‘so I just have to keep going and educating.'”- She admits her sense of duty toward the people with PTSD to inform those that don’t know about it.

 

-END OF ONE HOUR-

White paper 2—pATricKStar

Hypothesis

College students are at a high risk for mental health issues in the U.S.

Source 1

http://www.bu.edu/today/2016/mental-health-college-students/

The article explains how there has been an increase in the level of mental illness in college students everywhere. It also specifies this increase to Boston university and shows how they have saw an increase in their students with mental health issues.  Article explains which students are a higher risk. The students members of the LGBQT community are one of the groups because of how hard it might be to explain who they are. Another  person are the international students , they may find a challenging to relate to a socially with others coming from a different background.  Finally students who come from smaller high schools and transfer  to bigger colleges because this may find it harder to interact and fit in. This can cause then to feel alone and depressed.  Along with the stats of increasing mental illness, the article gives signs of mental illness they state if a personal starts to withdraw from social groups, starts sleeping more, has an increase in the substance-abuse, gives away all their possessions, and or starts posting suicidal related posts on social media and they are showing signs.  As we know learning and becoming aware it’s just one of the stops we could help but nothing is ever simple.  Most students don’t report because they don’t want to or they have fear of communicating but of the ones that do shows of shocking amount of mental illness.  Number is a referral to treatment at Boston University into thousand 14 and 2015 was 1,587.  In 2015 and 2016 number referred to treatment was 1,640. I stayed in mental health services are costly. This means students struggling financially probably not receive any treated even if needed.

source 2

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2732004/

Stress  is something we all go through. Whether it’s big or small we are all in town or stress at some point and our lines. Now there is good stress mad stress. Stress is the stress that motivate you to do better or even work harder. bad stress just leads you to being not proactive. Article goes into detail about how stress and substance abuse/addiction can go hand-in-hand if not treated properly. An experiment done on animals proves it. “Preclinical research also shows that stress exposure enhances drug self-administration and reinstates drug seeking in drug-experienced animals.” What we are finding out are Psychologist and researchers are starting to correlate the two as well as the facts. So now this topic is not just becoming an excuse for people to do engage in substance abuse it’s actually proven.

source 3

http://college.usatoday.com/2016/10/22/depression-is-at-an-all-time-high-for-college-students/ 

This article talks about depression. College students face many obstacles coming into the school. As we know it could be a stressful time and college was basically the place we learn to grow up you’re not baby anymore.  Depression is at a all time high for college students. As stated in the article, “According to a 2013 American Psychological Association survey, about one-third of college students have experienced depression within the past year and had difficulty functioning because of it.” This well-known fact is the reason why we need to focus on what is going on with students and how we can help them.  People think depression just has to do with sadness but some of the symptoms or signs he just can’t see. With many students losing their lives by being exposed to substance and partying with bad decisions out of impulse just to avoid feeling depressed. We have to ask ourselves, how can we stop this and how can we help.

Source 4

http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/stressed-or-depressed-know-difference

Something that I found interesting in this article article that contribute to my topic is that they actually put a list where you can compare and contrast the differences between being stressed mean depressed. This is important now since most of the signs are similar. Many of us think that they might be the same thing or is that just depressed might just be someone being sad when it’s much bigger than that.

Source 5

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40596-014-0205-9

this widespread of mental illness is increasing rapidly. This alarming fact is wellknown, what isn’t, is the fact that we don’t know how to stop it yet. among the mental illnesses that affect students are anxiety disorder. “Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent psychiatric problems among college students, with approximately 11.9 % of college students suffering from an anxiety disorder” this is a huge amount if you consider the millions of students in college in the U.S. another main mental illness address is depression. depression is one of the most harmful because if not treated people can cause harm to themselves. something i like about the article is the writer addresses the abuse of alcohol in college. with many people being leftuntreated for their mental illnesses this could be a life threatening situation as we hear about on the news. many kids drink them selves or abuse drugs to death. “Approximately one in five college students meet the criteria for alcohol use disorder (AUD) in the previous year (12.5 % alcohol dependence and 7.8 % alcohol abuse)”

 

Source 6

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.21972/abstract

this article talks about a survey done by The American College Health Association which surveyed to over 30,000 students across 39 campuses. “Results of the survey showed a significant increase in psychological problems on college campuses. For instance, 15.4% of students reported being diagnosed with depression. Furthermore, 28.4% of all students, regardless of whether they were diagnosed, reported that they felt so depressed that it was difficult to function.”what is alarming about this is as we know many students including myself will not go up and ask for help or talk to people. we feel the need to deal with it ourselves or some feel that they would get judged. The article addresses that substance abuse is another concern. with students not in the right state of mind this could be harmful to themselves and others.

Source 7

https://search.proquest.com/docview/1425547111?pq-origsite=summon

The amount of mental health issues of students has rose throughout the years.  “The most common substances used by young adults are alcohol, tobacco
and cannabis [8-10]. The use of two or more of these
substances simultaneously, known as polydrug use, has
received growing attention in the literature due to an increase
in prevalence in early adulthood.” With mental health issues many students may find the abuse of such substances such as drugs and alcohol as a way to relax and cope. the study done in the article focused on students 18-25 in france. it tried to determine what these students have in common. Which age/criteria fit best for the growing amount of the substance abuse.

Source 8

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306460312002110?via%3Dihub

Negative affects have been link to the abuse of substances of drugs and alcohol. People don just abuse these drugs without a purpose. in college this where most people are exposed to these real life situations. the article defines the need for these substance to cope has having a negative urgency. “Negative Urgency refers to an individual’s tendency to engage in impulsive behavior while experiencing feelings of distress. a study showed that women diagnosed with alcohol dependence had  higher levels of Negative Urgency compared to both a control group of women, and a group of women diagnosed with depression” Having Negative Urgency has been shown to lead to the abuse of alcohol, smoking, and the use of illegal drugs. what this proves is it could be psychological to cause these behaviors.

Source 9

https://search.proquest.com/docview/1791486139?pq-origsite=summon

“When an individual is faced with an intense emotional
experience the more dominant emotions take over, and the individual can no longer rationally consider the situation” It seems that in many articles it is an impulse control. that something in the brain makes us not distinguish from right or wrong. something makes us choose the easy way instead of the right way.

 

Stone Money – PaulaJean5

When you think about money, you most likely picture dollar bills and coins. Picturing this means that you live in a society where money is exchanged for goods and put into a bank. This type of society consists of people who may not be able to comprehend the monetary system on the island of Yap. On the island of Yap, possession alone was more important than acquiring somebody’s possession. As long as it was known that somebody owned a large limestone wheel, which was the symbol of wealth, they were able to ‘purchase’ important goods. If the bank gives a loan to somebody after you put your money in your account, then what is the difference of our society and the people of Yap?

To think that money is a unit of measurement seemed bizarre to me before studying and researching these different societies and their fix to the flawed monetary system. It is a measurement of wealth and in some cases, happiness. Brazil was dealing with extreme economic issues for decades. The inflation was so bad that the price of goods were going up every day. It got to the point where many people were committing suicide. The solution they came up with was virtual money. Instead of being paid in physical currency, their wages were listed in units of real value, or URV’s.

“..they wrote a plan for a new currency, one that was stable, dependable, trustworthy. The only catch was this currency would not be real. It would not be printed. There would never be coins. It was fake. They called it a virtual currency.” (Joffe-Walt, 2011)

This compares to our monetary system in the aspect of placeholders. In Brazil, none of your money was tangible. If it was, it was not worth anything. In our society, the money in our bank is not actually ours. It is just a way to measure our wealth.

Another form of currency is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a type of money that you can spend anonymously on the black market. “A form of “e-money,” Bitcoin is made of strings of dazzlingly complex code created by raw computing power — a process called “mining” that can in theory be carried out by anyone with a computer.” (Renaut, 2013) By buying and spending bitcoins, you can purchase things without the bank knowing or anybody for that matter. Today, bitcoins are worth a lot more than they were when they first came out. Using bitcoins, you will never had to trade them, only mine. Mining is the process of creating a complex code using a computer.

Essentially, money is not real. It is a fake concept that measures wealth. This in itself does not make sense. If the money is not real, this means that the wealth is fake as well. Once money is declared fake, everything that we use it for and everything that it stands for changes or becomes worthless in a way.

Works Cited

The Invention of Money. (2018, January 31). Retrieved February 07, 2018, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-moneyGoldstein, J., &

Kestenbaum, D. (2010, December 10). The Island Of Stone Money. Retrieved February 07, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin. Retrieved February 07, 2018, from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html

 

White Paper – PaulaJean5

PaulaJean’s Proposal

I am going to be researching the placebo effect and how the medical aspect of placebo effects relate to social stereotypical placebos or expectation bias. More specifically, the effect of people’s demographics and what other people say on their self-esteem and behaviors due to stereotypes or negative connotation.

PaulaJean’s Sources

Asking Students to Confirm Their Gender Before a Test Leads to Lower Scores for Girls, Higher for Boys

The essential content of this article: This article focuses on a study done by the Educational Testing Services where they asked a group of males/females to confirm their gender before the test and another group after. The females who got asked the inquiry about gender did worse than the other females who got asked after. The males who got asked before did better than the others who got asked the question after the test.

What it proves: The study in this article will help me prove that just mentioning somebody’s gender to them before they take a test will trigger an unconscious stereotype in their head and make them perform due to that specific stereotype. This shows how much we focus on other stereotypes around us without knowing.

Stinking Thinking and Expectation Bias

The essential content of this article: Stinking Thinking or ST language triggers negative thoughts that will bring ones self-esteem down, making them believe they will fail or that they are terrible people. This kind of language will change one’s mind about their own self. Certain phrases are said with the intention to lower one’s confidence. There are many ways of thinking/speaking that easily shape the way a person thinks. (i.e. “What if…?, “I should have…”, or the belief negative emotions make something real.)

What it proves: My thesis was created to essentially research how one’s language, phrasing, and/or perceptiveness to negativity effects one’s self-esteem. This article provides me with information that shows just by using certain words and phrases one can change somebody’s whole mood and confidence level. The way a person words the things they say can make other people around them acquire certain beliefs.

Enhancing Placebo Effects: Insights from Social Psychology

The essential content of this article: This study focuses on social psychology and how you can apply it to life and increase positive expectancies in clinical settings. Providing a comfortable office, many awards for the doctor/therapist, multiple degrees, and also a sense of comfort and familiarity will let a patient believe that any type of treatment will work as long as it is paired with these social psychology implications.

What it proves: My thesis focuses on things people say or do that change what you believe in or think. In this case, the way the office looked and people acted shaped a patient’s opinion on a certain treatment. This helps me show a real life example where this relationship exists and occurs.

The Weird Power of the Placebo Effect, Explained

The essential content of this article: This article focuses on the different types of effects and what causes them. Regression to the mean is an effect that is caused by time. As time goes on, the sickness/disorder will be healed by time. Confirmation bias is when a patient’s focus shifts from the sickness to the recovery. This shift lets the ill person recognize signs of health and recovery which will end up in ignorance towards the signs of illness. Expectations and learning tell us that we should respond to pain and/or medicines due to the cues we receive from our environment. For example, if a patient receives painkillers from a pump that they cannot see, they will need twice as much medicine as the patients who watch the doctor actually administer it to them. Pharmacological conditioning is related to learning and conditioned responses. If a patient takes a painkiller and then switches to a placebo unknowingly, it will provide the same response as the painkiller as the patient’s body was trained to relieve pain when it took that specific pill. Social learning works in the same way as watching somebody else take a pill that eases pain, will make that certain pill work for them as well. Human connection also has a big effect on what one feels as warmth and empathy can actually help kick start or push along the healing process more so than patients not receiving the same attention and warmth.

What it proves: This proves that there many ways to alter one’s thoughts and beliefs. For example, a lot of what a hospital is is a placebo which makes you more trusting of the treatment. The way the world works around us really creates and shapes how we will think until another placebo pops up and changes our train of thought yet again.

Dogs and the Placebo Effect

The essential content of this article: This article focuses on the placebo effect on animals. There was a study done where a dog was given actual pills and then switched to placebos. They had a way to measure the dog’s pain and found out that the placebos actually worked as a painkiller.

What it proves: This proves just how subconscious the placebo effect is. Dogs, who do not have the cognitive capacity to understand what the pill is actually trying to do for them, are susceptible to the placebo effect. This proves how effective a placebo can be.

Getting Drunk on Expectations

The essential content of this article: This article’s main focus is on the fact that you can be drinking non-alcoholic beer and get drunk. Of course, you can’t know it is non-alcoholic, but just the scene of a party can itself can get you drunk. Alcoholics are advised to not drink non-alcoholic beer and be in a party setting because it can cause a relapse in their recovery. Drinking out of a keg is enough of a cue to trigger the intoxicated feeling. The “needle freak phenomenon” is another example of this. People with an addiction to heroin can inject themselves with a saline solution, thinking it is heroin, and  get an instantaneous high. Cues themselves are very powerful.

What it proves: This proves how our minds can trick us. Just by setting up our atmosphere in a way that is familiar with certain feelings and experiences, we can feel certain ways without the stimulus even being present.

Are Diets Just Placebos?

The essential content of this article: This article focuses on how diets may not be working because of the actual diet, but because of the act. They have done many experiments, and each one showed how just by being told the food was healthy or a part of a diet.

What it proves: This proves, once again, how powerful our minds are. If we are told something will help us lose weight, we start losing weight and feeling healthier even if it is not exactly scientifically proven.

Placebo of HIV Trials

The essential content of this article: Between 1996 and 1999, there were certain trials that tested the effect of highly active antiretroviral therapy on patients with HIV. This treatment was more effective in the clinical trials then they were in hospitals. This is called the trial effect. This test was done later in the early 2000s. It did not show the same results as the perception of HIV changed and there was more evidence to prove that HIV is more treatable.

What it proves: This proves that the time of studies can change results, but the placebo effect still shows. The trial effect is an interesting situation as one may intuitively think that being given treatment in a hospital would be more effective than a treatment in a clinical trial. But still, the time of the study and the relevance is very important for the placebo effect to take place.

Is the Placebo Effect a Placebo?

The essential content of this article: This article focuses on how the placebo effect is just a placebo. The placebo needs multiple factors and varies in every situation. Nobody responds the same way to things, and this is also creates a more difficult way to prove the placebo effect.

What it proves: This article proves that placebo effects are difficult to prove. I do not believe what this article says besides that. There are some flaws and not enough evidence supporting their point. Placebos are very hard to prove, but there is a lot of evidence that points towards it.

The Placebo Effect and Marketing

The essential content of this article: This article focuses on how marketers and advertisers can alter their products and advertisements to appeal to consumers. When they change their products, they start this expectation so when they buy it, it is as good as the commercial or advertisement said. Social media has a huge effect on this as well.

What it proves: This article proves that commercials are very meticulously created so that people buy these things and enjoy them when they are consumed or used.

What I am still looking for…

I am still looking for a thesis statement that is coherent and effective. I like where I am going, but I need to shape and create a thesis that is provable and able to be written a lot about.

Current state of research…

I like all of my sources so far, but I am not 100% confident on my progress. I am having a hard time getting my thoughts together. I think with time and help, my confidence will go up.

 

PTSD Claims A03- summergirl1999

Section 00? 

BEGIN THE ONE HOUR EXERCISE.

  1. “The pictures in his brain disorienting him among the stacks, which could turn from stacks to rows of rooftops that need to be scanned for snipers.”

Casual Claim.

 The pictures in his brain disorienting: One of the effects Caleb is experiencing from PTSD. Pictures are coming to his mind from previous experiences.

  • Stacks to rows of rooftops that need to be scanned for snipers: Caleb just doing a normal thing, gets interrupted by the effects of PTSD.
  1. “Hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins, or a misbehaving amygdala. Family history, or maybe previous trauma.”

Evaluative Claim.

  • PTSD does not affect everyone.
  • Some people with PTSD blame it on products or trauma.
  • Certain things can trigger PTSD in some people.
  1. “Whatever is happening to Caleb, it’s as old as war itself.”

Casual Claim.

  • “It’s as old as war itself.” Simile.
  • PTSD has been effecting people for a long time.
  1. The ancient historian Herodotus told of Greeks being honorably dismissed for being “out of heart” and “unwilling to encounter danger.”

 Factual Claim,

  • Greeks were dismissed from having side effects of PTSD.
  • There was not a given name for the diagnoses.
  • Instead of being dismissed from PTSD the Greeks were dismissed for being “out of heart and “unwilling to encounter danger.
  1. “It wasn’t an official diagnosis until 1980, when Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made its debut in psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”

Factual Claim.

  • Was not considered an official sickness until 1980.
  • Made a debut in book.

END OF ONE HOUR EXERCISE

Stone Money-Dohertyk9

Upon first hearing of the concept of the Yap’s stone money, I had no idea what to think. How could money be paid to someone without the currency actually changing possession between the two people? After the idea had been explained to me in detail, the claim made by the Planet Money team at NPR that, “money is fiction”, suddenly made a lot of sense. The Yap’s money did not need to change possession, because the entire population recognized which person the money belonged to. Therefore, the insane notion that a rock at the bottom of the sea that only a select group of people had actually seen could be recognized as money was actually sensible. To the Yap, money was abstract, only in existence because they believed it existed. The moment that the Yap no longer believe in the value of their stone money, the moment it no longer has any value at all.

This same concept was used to fix the inflation crisis in Brazil; a group of economic experts solved the crisis by renewing Brazilians’ belief in their own money. Brazilians adopted many ways to handle the inflation crisis. Some people raced those that changed the daily price tags, trying to reach shops before the price officially rose for the day. Others removed the price tags and paid the original price. However, some people gave in to hopelessness and despair, so suicide was common. The irony of it all was the fact that it was the entire population’s lack of belief in their money that allowed the crisis to continue. To solve the crisis, the economic experts proposed that the entire country use a fake but standardized form of currency called URVs. Suddenly, the price of products did not change everyday; for example, one loaf of bread was valued at one URV every day. The economists made this work by changing the exchange value of cruzeros to URVs. One day, the loaf of bread worth one URV equaled fifteen cruzeros; the next it equaled twenty cruzeros, and so on. The end result was that Brazilians recognized URVs as currency for everything, and so it became the actual currency. Brazilians that experienced the change from cruzeros to URVs were astonished and considered it to be magical.

The United States Federal Reserve is fascinatingly similar to the Yap’s system. Instead of stones, we have banks. Money that seems to disappear from our banks in reality never existed in the first place as anything other than a number. The number has value because when a person checks his bank account, he considers that number to be representative of his wealth. The treasury of the U.S. does not treat its power with any manner of grandeur; instead, the people that work for the Federal Reserve downplay their powers to the extent of boredom. Pumping enormous sums of new money into the system is done with a few simple clicks on a computer. Click! A million dollars added to the economy.

The views of the French bank towards gold in 1932-33 actually mirror the Yap’s perception of their money. Because the Federal Reserve bank separated gold and labeled it as belonging to the French, the U.S. believed that it had lost that money. In reality, the money had never left the vault, yet both France and America recognized that there had been an exchange in currency. France considered itself to be financially superior, while the United States considered itself to be financially inferior. Many people feared for the economy over the loss of so much gold; so much gold that had never truly left the United States, but had left its economy.

Nothing clarifies the idea that “money is fiction” more than when the German government abruptly shut down the Yap’s monetary system with a few black X’s on their stones. Something about the marks on the stones caused the Yap to lose faith in their system, and because of that loss in faith, the stones became worthless. The Yaps readily complied with the German government’s wishes for better roads despite their previous hesitation. The roads were improved, and the X’s were erased. Just as suddenly as the Yaps’ system had frozen, it returned to its former state.

The Yaps believed that money could exist without physical or written proof. This differs only slightly from our own government’s idea of money; in the United States, our money is defined by a number. A statement displaying that number is proof of our monetary value. The Yaps’ concept of money was only more abstract because there was no document of their money, only a societal understanding of how much money belonged to who. In the United States, money is somewhat fluid; it does not usually vary much from day to day, but inflation can change its value significantly over time.

The article, “The Bubble Bursts on E-Currency Bitcoin” by Anne Renaut reaffirms the same concept that has been echoed in history across different monetary systems. Bitcoin, a type of electronic money, is similar both to the Yap’s money and to the currency of the United States. It is similar in that there is no visible, concrete substance to represent Bitcoin. Bitcoin is entirely electronic and thus can be electronically created, exchanged, and stored. None of the owners of Bitcoin will ever see their money, yet their belief in the system allows Bitcoin to exist as a legitimate form of currency, just like the Yap’s monetary system.

Although this concept that money is fake initially shocked me, it no longer surprises me. Time and again, it has been proven that money only has the value that we attach to it. For example, if an alien race seized Earth and imposed its rule on us, they may deem our money to be worthless. This would have the same effect as the X’s on the Yap’s money had; the entire global economy would freeze. If the rest of the solar system does not use U.S. dollars, than those dollars could suddenly become useless.

 

Works Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin. Retrieved February 07, 2018, from https://phys.org/news/2013-04-e-currency-bitcoin.html

 

 

Stone Money- Ugandan Knuckles

When I first started the reading and listening processes of this writing piece, I had always known that money was a man-made thing that didn’t really mean much. What I didn’t realize was that so much of how much money is worth is based on how much the people who use it believe in its worth.

When the faith that people have in their currency comes into question, that’s where problems arise. Whether it’s because there’s no longer anything backing up the currency, or because it’s so inflated that it’s worth nothing, a lack of belief in a currency can lead to an economic crash similar to the one that happened in Brazil between 1950 and 2000. The economic crash in Brazil was the main focus of the NPR broadcast that we listened to as source material. The main reason for the crash in Brazil was inflation. The government wanted to shift it’s capital to the middle of the jungle, but that costs a lot of money. Money that the country didn’t have. Their solution was to just print the money they needed to pay for it, which ended up being a short-sighted idea that created a snowballing issue for the next 50 years. Multiple elected officials tried their best to fix the issue (one was so bad that they were impeached), but no one could seem to find the answer. That is until one group men figured out a way to abuse the idea of money.

They had the idea to make everyone pay for things and get paid in URVs. Milk would cost one URV everyday, but the each URV would equal a different amount of reis, or the currency that Brazil had the time. If a person was payed say, 500 URV each week, the amount they received would stay stagnant, but the amount they were paid in the original currency would fluctuate. It gave people a currency to believe in, and so they were more likely to spend their money and keep the economy moving. The policy began on March 27, 1993, and was over by July the next year. Just over a year of having a fake currency did the trick, and the original currency of “reis” was replaced, funnily enough, by the currency called “real.” Looking back on the situation, an interviewed person from Brazil laughed and said “It was a fantasy, haha, not real!”

Milton Friedman wrote an interesting essay in February of 1991 on the stone money of people Yap. Said stone money was called “fei” and it was made from huge chunks of limestone from an island very far away from where the Yap lived. They took their stone money just as seriously as people do nowadays. When the Germans wanted the Yaps to repair their roads that become poor in condition, they put big black crosses on the stones to symbolize that they controlled them until the roads were repaired. Needless to say the roads were quickly repaired, although Friedman summed it up well when he wrote “Presto! The fine was paid, the happy Failus (citizens of the island) resumed possession of their capital stock, and rolled in wealth.”

Wealth is kind of a made up of made up ideas. Money is a made up concept, so being wealthy, or having a substantial amount of that made up concept means nothing. Chances are, the money is located in a bank account where it remains a number in a system until you wish to take it out. Similar to the giant stones of Yap, the size of the fei (rock) and the size of the number in the bank are just symbols of how much you have. What you have means nothing until you try to spend it. Then, some of your number, or your fei, gets transmitted to someone else. No questions asked, and everyone knows that it belongs to that new person.

The last source topic I read was on financial situation in Japan. Japan had been the poster child for way a good economy should look like for several decades following the recovery post World War II, but by the late 1990s and early 2000s, that was starting to change. “Perhaps the pendulum was destined to swing back.” are the very first words of the article, and they’re fitting of how economics work; a series of ups and downs. Shinzo Abe, Japans latest prime minister (at the time), has promised to start to fix the situation by having the Bank of Japan create 12 trillion yen, or $134 billion. So far, Shinzo’s efforts have been effective, and Japan has already begun reaping the benefits. The main opposition that people have to creating so much new yen is that the money could go to dead companies or just wind up being more money into the pockets of industries that don’t need any more money. Another issue is that people could become dependent on the government constantly creating increasing amounts of new money. That will create a debatably worse issue in having uncontrollable inflation. Everything is going well right now, but if the prices of goods increase faster than the increases in wages, there could be issues. Not just for the Japanese people, but for Shinzo Abe, who had to resign from a previous term due to a stress-induced intestinal illness.

The listening that I did and the reading taught me a lot about money that I didn’t know before. Mostly that it’s all fake and just a representation of something that really doesn’t exist. The worth of a currency is all based on where you go and when you go. Milk from one person can be worth $2 while from another it’s worth $4, it’s all up to the seller. I also learned that the money we have now may be annoying, but it’s nowhere near as annoying as having to sail out and chisel huge pieces of limestone the next time I want to buy something. The last thing I learned was that Japan had a failing economy in the 1990’s and 2000’s despite the increasing worldwide popularity of anime during that time.

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Tabuchi, Hiroko. “Back in Power, Abe Aims to Spend Japan Back to Economic Vitality.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 Jan. 2013, dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/22/back-in-power-abe-aims-to-spend-japan-back-to-economic-vitality/.

Stone Money- DudeInTheBack

P1. To list all of the effects money has on our world would be impossible simply because money is what keeps the world working. It’s true, without some form of monetized systems for trading, who would want to work, and why would they do it? Because of moneys value, and the way we (as a society) view currency, we work almost purposefully for the money. The motivation for “gettin’ the money” can fully be credited to what we can do with the money. A piece of papper, coin, or rock (currency) acts like a sort of value placeholder. Through these past classes, and extending work outside the classroom learning about different histories of moneys worth has been fascinating to me just because of its knottiness.

P2. Money is the most basic, yet convoluted unit of measurement to determine the degree of what someone, or something is worth. I say measurement now, (and probably would not have even thought of money being a measurement a couple weeks ago) because it really is a measurement. money measures things like wealth, or any asset with substantial value. For example, if you have a big cow, somehow you acquired this big cow. Two likely scenarios predating this acquisition could potentially be: You were granted through time and breeding this big cow, and now you want to sell it. The other being you just bartered something else with what the previous cow owner thought was of equal value. Without this rudimentary measurement of worth, how would one be able to justify what one owns? This value, in todays society, is expressed through currency. having money backing everything gives everything a tradable value.

P3. These questions of why money has value, or how we assigned the job of having value to an object, can only be answered by examples of how monetary value has been used/how it is used today. Thorough my somewhat extensive research on all of the unfathomable ways money has been used. After all of it, I have come to the conclusion that money is not a real thing. What! how could this be? Relax. It’s a real tangible thing if you consider object currency, but money is a concept. A sort of placeholder for an imaginary unit. After reading about the Island of Yap, located in the Pacific ocean, my thoughts on how abstract money can get began to develop. Picture this, huge limestone carved disks with holes in the middle of them weighing in at about seven or eight metric tons. In the island, these stones, or “Fei” was used as a currency. Massive stone coins that sat where everyone could see them, and everyone just knew who they belonged to. In an essay by Friedman on the concept of stone money, he explains, “… it is not necessary for its owner to reduce it to possession.” The owners of the stone, and the wealth of having the stone did not even need to have possession of this stone. If it was “there” it was recognized as being there. A very abstract concept, but surprisingly effective and efficient for the island. A parallel to this currency of Fei, is our modern day checks, and even bank accounts in general. How much money in your bank account are you actually physically touching? None. Its just some digital number that gives you some sort of worth. Its the same thing as having the stone. People just recognize your wealth by having a big stone, or a big number in your bank account.

P4. My new view on money and how I have come to the realization that it is fake also comes from a story in Brazil. After listening to the NPR broadcast “How Fake Money Saved Brazil”  I have gained a deeper confusion on how the money system works. Chana Joffe-Walt, the narrator of the podcast in act one says that, “in 1990 inflation in Brazil was 80 percent a month…” Having such high inflation rates, the Government was at a loss for solutions. A group of colleagues were called in to find a solution, coming up with a virtual currency named, “Unit of Real Value” (URV’s). The government along with the four heroic alumni called in made the decision to lie to the citizens. One of the people on the podcast saying, “… they wanted to change people themselves… people had to be tricked into thinking money had value.” (Joffe-Walt). Persuading them that their money actually had value was the only way to save the economy, and the value of their currency. “The idea was that people would start thinking in URVs – and stop expecting prices to always go up.” (Joffe-Walt). Brazil lived with high inflation rates for decades, if this problem could be solved so easily by making up what seemed like a lie to get them out seems counterintuitive. Who would think that would work? Well, It did, and that’s what saved Brazils economy.

P5. Today, we have a new complicated currency called Bitcoin. In 2009, Bitcoin software was made available to the public for the first time. Although Bitcoin was the first established cryptocurrency, there were others… but they did not blow up like Bitcoin.  Bernard Marr, said in his article called, ”A Short History Of Bitcoin And Crypto Currency Everyone Should Read” said ”As it had never been traded, only mined, it was impossible to assign a monetary value to the units of the emerging cryptocurrency.” (Bernard Marr) Mining was a long process where your bitcoin could grow, but still, no real monetary value. Supply and demand began to grow for bitcoin. Where in 2010 bitcoin was practically worth nothing, to skyrocketing into being worth millions.

P6. I have learned a lot about money these past couple weeks, and I find all of this information very interesting. currency has gone through so many stages, and adaptations to new society’s. Not a lot of people are familiar with things liken the island of stone money, and I certainly was never taught it. History has presented us with many crazy currencies… which brings me to the question, “whats next”? What new currency, or value of something will go up/down? We will never know until we get there.

Work Cited