Summary 1- “Do Toms Shoes Really Help People?”
It seems counterintuitive that a “buy one, give one” shoe business, such as Toms, a company in which people make a shoe purchase and then a pair of shoes is sent to someone in need, would not be much of a help to those people at all. However, Sarika Bansal from New York Times says that Toms might be guessing wrong. Do those people really need shoes?
Toms claims that the promotion of their shoes help children get an education, for in some places the children are prohibited from entering a school without shoes on. Sarika Bansal writes about her recent trip to Ethiopia, where she learned that the children that attend the school are gifted shoes from the school itself, meaning they are in no need of shoes at all.
When a tsunami hit Indonesia, the area was in a famine. People could not find food around them, so people began to send rice donations. This, however, only created a rice competition.
Toms also is known not to sell to local shoe stores, making it harder for the people to actually obtain the shoes. Bansal wrote to Toms and requested they start selling shoes locally so that more people can purchase them, but Toms never responded. Greg Adams made a comment that businesses such as Toms is considered a risk.
After the Haiti earthquake, people began to rely on NGO’s for food, for they knew their government would not supply enough for them. Toms decided to jump in and offer the Haitians shoes after the quake, for they simply assumed they would be in need. Alanna Shaikh wrote in a watchdog blog called “Aidwatch” an article called, “Nobody Wants Your Old Shoes: How Not to Help in Haiti”. She writes that people around the world never really know what is necessary unless they live there.
But, there is hope for buy one, give one companies. If they stop competing with other businesses, and if they start to cooperate with places in need to see what supplies they are lacking, they could start giving them resources they actually need. One company is Warby Parker who makes glasses, and another is Two Degrees Foods donates meals to hungry children. However, it is hard to figure out the basis of the way Toms works, for there is very little information on their website, which is an issue because buyers want to know exactly how their money is being spent.
Summary 2- Men Defining Rape: A History
It seems counterintuitive to think that human beings could really deny a woman of being raped, however, the issue of rape has been evident for thousands of years. Overtime, men have been deciding on their own when it is okay or not okay to rape women. This article reveals a timeline of how men have been defining rape for thousands of years.
Hammurabi’s Code, 1780 B.C, claims that raping a virgin is “property damage” against her father. If you were married and were raped, it was considered cheating. They punished such sinners by throwing them in a river.
Deuteronomy 22:28-29 states that if a virgin is raped, the rapist owes her father 50 shekels and to marry her.
In Rome, the word raptus means the abduction of a woman. This means whatever was done to her next was secondary to the abductor.
An old British Text called Fleta stated that if a women was raped and became pregnant afterwards, then she was not raped for you cannot be able to conceive unless you gave consent.
In North Carolina, a man could legally rape his wife until 1993. They believed woman gave themselves up by getting married, making the men entitled to sex.
If you were of color, if you were raped, it wasn’t considered “rape”. Even after the abolishment, white people still ignored the rape of colored people.
In the 18th and 19th century, men began to demand proof that a women was raped. Dr. Lawson Tait even said that if the woman didn’t squirm a lot, it was not rape. He says, “You cannot thread a moving needle.”
Women have been fighting for laws against rape and to do with rape, including date rape, and the rape of gender neutral people. You do not have to be a virgin to be raped. No matter the relationship, if a women does not want to have sex, the answer is no.
January of 2012, the FBI finally decided to change their definition of rape to include different kinds of sexual assault, other genders, for the victim being unable to give consent either by intoxication or loss of consciousness or simply for being in the wrong state of mind.
It was just last year that Republicans took a step back on the rape of women. They proposed to cut back on funding of abortions to women who were considered to be in situations of “non” forcible rape. Of course, this failed, but the Republican fight against women just begun. They insist that if a women is being raped, then her body would have the ability to prevent it, as if they could stop their bodies from being invaded.
Summary 3- Do Multivitamins Really Work?
It seems counterintuitive that multivitamins would be doing more harm than good, but studies show the facts. An estimated one third of Americans take multivitamins daily (myself being a part of that percentage). The studies show, however, that multivitamins aren’t doing what they are supposed to do, or what people think they do. There seems to be little to no evidence that actually shows that it makes people healthier. In fact, vitamin deficiency is a rare occasion in the United States. Advertisements say that the vitamins help with bone strength, the heart, breast health, but in 2009 a group of women conducted an experiment that proved that the vitamins did not protect any aforementioned diseases they were said to protect against. This included heart disease, colon, and breast cancer.
Also, most people get their daily supply of vitamins from the food they eat alone. The body has a limit for certain vitamins and minerals, so if we indulge in more than the necessary amount by eating the vitamins, it is not healthy for us, and in fact is quite dangerous. Some studies have concluded that excessive vitamin intake to lesions that can lead to cancers. For the elderly, if they take an iron pill but get enough iron from the food they eat already, it is possible they could increase their risk of getting heart disease. Pregnant women could also increase the risk of birth defects by taking too many vitamins.
Thankfully, last June, manufacturers began to be forced to add a warning label on the bottles of vitamins to warn their users of the possible outcomes if misused. However, some vitamins lack a warning label, such as a gummy vitamin for kids that exceeded the necessary amount of vitamin A and zinc.
Federal Health Officials are telling healthy people to stop worrying about taking vitamins. However, some vitamins could help people suffering from anorexia, and kids that are picky eaters. The truth is, we might not realize just how much we benefit from our food intake, and we also might not realize the dangers of taking multivitamins.
Rowan Counterintuitive 