Category: Authors FA17

Usernames for Fall 2017 students of Comp II

Stone Money Rewrite- Theadmiral

The Ambiguity of Money

Presently at any mall, convenience store, or place of business, one will rarely witness paper money transactions. Instead, credit and debit card transactions are the new norm as a swipe of a plastic is the trendy method to transfer funds. In fact, technology advanced so far that a customer just needs a smart phone to carry out a retail transaction. Similarly, the economic structures about one hundred years ago on the small island called Yap depicted in the essay by Milton Freidman entitled “The Island of Stone Money” exhibits similar habits. The main difference between today’s American society and Yap lies in the method of payment; instead of swiping cards as use of currency, the people of Yap used large pieces of limestone, shaped and brought over by small bamboo boats hundreds of miles away. These large pieces of limestone changed hands maybe two or three times in a person’s life, because the people of Yap would not use these for everyday essentials like buying groceries; however, the they spent their limestones on wedding dowries for their daughters, and purchasing plots of land for construction of domestic dwellings. After building a dwelling or securing the dowry, the wealth was exchanged from person to person without moving a single stone. Like the swipe of a plastic card that lacks an actual physical transfer of money for goods or services, the people of Yap transferred wealth from one individual to another. After reviewing all the concepts from the article on the Yap society as well as the information on modern American society, one can conclude that the exchange of paper dollars is rather obsolete as compared to the “old days” when “cash was king.”

To understand the transition of paper money from something that previously had intrinsic value to something that has no value at all, one should understand the history of how paper dollars got their worth. Many years ago, when the United States had enough gold to back up the paper money, one could bring a dollar to the bank and get a dollar’s worth of gold. As the United States government continued to print paper money, the amount of gold one could get with that dollar declined because there were more bills in circulation than the gold that backed them. This concept is what we know as inflation. The island of Yap does not have this problem. As stated in Friedman’s essay, Yap does not have precious metals like gold and silver on their island, so there is no perceived value in material things like metals or even a piece of paper. What Yap sees value in is arduous task of making the Fei, the actual word for the stone money, and the long, dangerous journey involved with traveling to the limestone quarries hundreds of miles away.

The transition to a worthless dollar from the paper dollar that once had worth to people is truly fascinating. Talking to small business owners, Chuck and Maria Nucci, on the matter, they explained things from their point of view. The Nucci have prior business experience with money as they owned a retail establishment for over twenty years. The Nuccis were in the jewelry business for quite some time, so they witnessed firsthand the relationship between gold and paper money. Chuck Nucci explained to inner workings of the gold market and the relationship between the paper dollar and pure gold as a trading commodity. Nucci explained there was a time when gold was not regulated, one purchased gold bullion for about two hundred dollars an ounce. Once it started trading as a popular commodity and became a regulated market, the price of gold sky rocketed and its value doubled, bringing the price to about four hundred dollars an ounce in 1989 according to charts from onlygold.com. Accordingly, when the price of gold goes up, the price of the dollar goes down which makes money which had perceived value to just a piece pf paper.

After again speaking with the Nuccis about this assignment, Chuck Nucci posed an important question, “what exactly gives this big rock so much worth”?  The information in the articles are thought provoking; realistically, the fei and the dollar bill in today’s society are exactly the same. If one has a one-dollar bill and a one-hundred-dollar bill, and puts them side-by-side, there is not much of a difference between the two except for a watermark, a picture, and a number. Today, there is not nearly enough gold in depositories like Fort Knox to back up the actual worth of American bills, so paper money is now essentially a piece of paper, just as Fei is a large piece of limestone.  Both Fei and paper money rely on word of mouth and have the perception that an ordinary object such as a piece of paper or a rock have value. In contrast, they are both ordinary items that have no value at all. In conclusion, the Fei, and the dollar bill are very similar; both have value because of how they are used in their given societies.

 

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

Nucci, Charles. Personal interview. 10 September 2017

Nucci Maria. Personal interview. 10 September 2017

“Historical Gold Prices Annual high and low Gold prices since 1972.” Historical spot gold prices, onlygold.com/Info/Gold-Price-History-Since-1972.asp. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.

Stone Money Rewrite- Yoshi

Money is Not Real

In the little Island of Yap, the wealthy people would get onto a boat, and travel 400 miles to get these large, uneven limestone discs. These discs were so big and heavy, it was an uncomfortable trip for the people of Yap. The limestone discs were called fei, they were used as currency. The shaping of the stone requires intense labor; that is why they’re so valuable. There are big holes in the middle of the discs, in order for them to be transported around the small island of Yap. Ironically, the holes are used for them to be moved to their first location; after that, they do not move!

They will usually trade the fei for big purchases according to NPR’s Broadcast of “The Story of the Stone Money.” The thought of a huge, hole-drilled stone from an island quarry could make the people of Yap rich is very peculiar. It sounds less reasonable that the stones aren’t actually in the possession of their owner. As I started listening to NPR’s Broadcast of “The Story of the Stone Money” and reading Milton Friedman’s “Island of Stone Money” I began to realize our economy and our visual of money is not too far off from those that live in Yap. Both, the Yap and us Americans, believe we can be wealthy and gain wealth by not actually physically moving anything. Someone in Yap claims a stone that fell to the bottom of the ocean. But just the same, we do not need cash, all we need is a magnetic stripe to move wealth around. If that does not seem strange to us, then neither should the Yap claiming a stone they have never seen.

In Milton Friedman’s story, “Island of Stone Money” Friedman explains how the French didn’t think the USA would stick to their gold standard of $20.67 an ounce. Therefore, according to Friedman, they asked the NY Federal Reserve to convert their dollar assets into gold, and set it aside for them instead of shipping it overseas. The Federal Reserve then put aside gold for the french. They separated the gold, and put it in drawers so it wasn’t touched. This way everyone knew that belonged to them.  After reading that I realized money is just knowing what you have, it is nothing physical. For example, you do not need the physical cash in your hand to determine your wealth. In Yap they determined their wealth by others knowing how many fei they owned, and not much different us in the USA determine how wealthy we are by digital numbers raising in our accounts.

After reading, “Island of Stone Money” I began to questions why do so many people have the faith in others to determine their own wealth. For example, how is it that I deposit money into my bank account, and a digital number, a machine gives me, determines my wealth. How does money from my account get taken out, and put into the car companies account. But nothing physically is exchanged? That flimsy green piece of linen is rarely used anymore, it is all about the plastic card with a chip in it. How is it that France has the faith in us to put aside gold for them that they bought, but they never physically saw? How is it that there is a fei at the bottom of the ocean near Yap that no one has seen for years, but yet it is still being used as if it was physically there.

I continued my research on how people put their faith into other with their money, and I came across an article by NPR’s Broadcast called “How Fake Money Saved Brazil”. Just twenty years ago inflation in Brazil reached 80% a month according to NPR. Brazil’s inflation began when Brazil’s government printed money in order to build Brasilia, Brazil’s capital. They created a new currency and it improved their economy rapidly! People would still have cruceros, but everything was listed in a URV, Unite of Real Value. One URV would equal 7 cruceros, and the next week one URV would equal 14 cruceros. According to NPR broadcast this idea was created so people would stop thinking prices would go up. After a few months the prices began to equal out, and that’s when they decided the URV was the new real currency. After this change 20,000 people got out of poverty!

Money is different everywhere you go, but the way it is used is very similar. The people of Yap would just mark their fei with a painted ‘X’ to claim it, and correspondingly the Federal Reserve put gold aside for the French and labeled it, so everyone knew it was for the French. The same thing happens here in the United States; almost everyone keeps their money in banks, and the only way they know who owns it is through an account number. If you think about it money is almost never actually exchanged physically in person. Transferring money from one person to another can be done from the comfort of your own home, using online banking. Almost everyone has moved to online banking, because it is so much more convenient. Most of the world has moved on from physically money, and developed a way to claim it without having it with them.

After reading these articles I came to think, what actually is money? To the people in Yap money is a big rigid limestone that doesn’t have to be in their possession. To us money is fake, it isn’t that green rectangle linen with pictures on it. It is numbers we see in our accounts, and we use plastic cards to make purchases. To Brazilians money was virtual, it didn’t exist it was just a unit of measurement to control their inflation.  Throughout the years money has developed many different values. Now a days it is hard to survive without money, even though we might not even physically see it. I believe money is what makes the world go around. Even if no one actually has a definition of what money is.  Money all around the world is physically different, but the actual use of it is all the same. What connects everyone’s money value to all others are their concept of money. The concept of money is just the trust you have in each other. Whether you live in the US and put your trust in a bank. Or whether you live in Yap, and put your trust into other people knowing what is yours, or even trusting 4 men you have never met before to create a new currency and help inflation. Money is different everywhere, it is the trust that makes it the same.

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

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 9 Sept. 2017. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;.

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

A04: Stone Money Rewrite- LifeisSublime

Money is a Concept

Money is a concept. It’s a concept created by human beings in order to simplify trade and distribute power. Whether is be with paper, plastic, stones or some made up currency, the thought of money was utilized to make it easier to buy things and to produce a name for someone in a town where they are know for their financial standing. With all that being said it’s time that people look at money, not as how much they personally have in the bank, but as something that exists but doesn’t, something that’s important but isn’t, and something that was made on the grounds of trade, nothing more, nothing less.

In order to understand that money is nothing more than an organizational tactic for trade, you must understand what money is for the people of the Yap islands. The island of Yap is a very small island located in the Pacific Ocean. This tiny island wouldn’t even be something to talk about if it wasn’t for their currency and how they perceive the values of it. On this island people use huge stoned carved into circles to represent money. The family with the biggest and nicest stone was to be consider the most wealthy. These stones where carved on a certain island within this island chain and brought to the island of Yaps once they were finished. One family ordered a stone so beautiful and big that it would hold their financial standing up among everyone else. On the boat ride back, with the giant stone aboard, the working men claimed that the stone fell out of the boat and sank to the bottom of the ocean floor. Coming back to shore empty handed would have made most people extremely upset that their prize possession now a wonderful addition to the coral reef, but not for the people on this island. The family didn’t fret at all because they still, in a way, owned the stone and everyone also knew that. The philosophy that these people have regarding their currency is that if the town knows you have it, then it’s yours. So no matter whether or not the stone is present for trade or becoming a wonderful home for the fishes, the value of the stone still stands and it stands for the family that is know for having it. That is a very interesting take on money. These people use stone circles, compared to the dollar bills in our wallets, but don’t even need to have it on them to be considered “good for it”. Their currency is based upon trust and community, the actual thing that “holds value” doesn’t even need to be present to stand the value. That’s pretty incredible and proves that money is a concept, especially to these people.

Over in Brazil, in the 1980’s, their economy was facing a major downfall. This problem had been brewing since the 1950’s and it stemmed from overproduction of money. Brazil was looking at an 80% inflation rate per month. Meaning that if something cause $1 this month, it would cost $2 the next month. In order to fix this problem the president pulled in a couple of guys straight out of college and put their plan to save the economy in place. They needed to slow the production of money while installing the people’s faith back into the currency since everyone bought in bulk out of fear of the inflation. They created URV’s, Unit of Real Value, which, despite the name, wasn’t real at all; it was virtual. The URV’s were given to the people and instructed them to use it just like money. The catch was the value that they held; the inflation was still climbing but instead of paying $1 you payed 1 URV, and next month instead of paying that $2 you payed 1 URV. URV’s held value for everything purchasable in Brazil but the prices never changed. Eventual the currency balanced out and Brazil actually started using the URV’s as their permanent use of money. So for Brazil the people were using money that wasn’t real, and like the people of the Yap islands, the value wasn’t there. The people didn’t know how much each URV was valued at, but it didn’t stop them from spending and circulation the wealth which fixed their problem in the end. Money is a concept in Brazil because the value isn’t always there and it doesn’t matter.

To make this more relatable I looked up the economy that America has been facing for the past decade and tried to compare it to both Yap and Brazil. In America we pass around paper bills that supposably are worth, or were worth gold (gold being the most valuable thing on the Earth at one point). Paper versus gold. Then it occurred to me that not everyone gets paper dollars, physical, but paper checks that claim that money is known as yours, non-physical. That is the same as having a URV that is claiming to be something when you never actually see the physical worth of it, it’s just numbers on a piece of paper, or more recently, digits that change when you check your bank accounts. Having money “known as yours” sounds very similar to having that rock in the water but still knowing that the worth of it is yours. Comparing what I know from the island of Yap and Brazil, this isn’t an uncommon thing. Even in todays day in age and in America is money still concept. Its a circulation of paper that isn’t even present at the time of exchange. Money is a concept here as well.

Money, or should I say currency,  has lots of power on a lot of things, but when you boil it all down does it really hold value to it? After analyzing Yap, Brazil, and America on their currencies and how they use them I have come to the conclusion that although currency and money is a very useful system of trade, it has become more of a concept than a physical action. Money is a concept, and the proof is in your wallet.

 

Works Cited

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

“The Invention of Money.” This American Life. N.p., n.d. Web

Thomas, M. (2014, October 13). What a stronger dollar means for the economy. Retrieved September 10, 2017, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-will-a-strengthening-dollar-affect-the-us-economy/

 

Stoney Money Rewrite–Splash

Value of Money

When I was listening to the story of about the island of Yap in class I thought to myself my teacher was making this story up. My teacher told us about how people would make huge limestones and ship the 400 miles away by boat to some island so far away. Even when people would use them for a purchase they wouldn’t have to be moved anywhere to change ownership. Why would people take the time to make such large limestone coins to be their representation of money? It seemed absurd because you couldn’t even move them easily or use them for little things like food for the house, it had to be spent on something big like building a new house or as said in the Planet Money Prologue if one of your warriors died in war we could use that stone to buy back the warriors body. It was also interesting to know that only if we had one of these stones it would mean we are considered as wealthy, which was different because we could have tons of gold and other forms of money but we weren’t ever considered to be as wealthy as someone who owned one of these stones as stated in the story of stone money. Also, something else I read was that there was no form of documentation on this island of Yap, they have such a strong faith in each other’s word. Someone could say they wanted a house built, a contractor would come out build a house with no upfront pay but know that the fei was his once the house was completed. Even while reading Friedman’s essay the thing that stood out the most to me was when he talked about the magnificent fei that was being delivered over sea. A big storm aroused and the fei sank to the bottom of the ocean, and the people on the island of Yap were perfectly fine with that. They said that even though it is at the bottom of the ocean it still has its value, just as if it were leaning against the owner’s house. To me this is ridiculous because if that were my fei that sank I wouldn’t be as calm about it as they are and it wouldn’t seem valuable to me anymore.

Then that has me go into thinking why is money so important to people, and what is the point of money in the first place? The NPR broadcast I was listening to talks about all the stages of money and how it has changed over the years. It first started as the stone fei, then to gold, and bills, off to checks, and now it is as simple as just a number appearing in our bank account. It was enjoyable how they were talking about the differences in how payments work now a days, they said that when they pay their phone bill it’s not like someone goes and delivers a hundred dollars to their phone company. It is almost as if they are just sending numbers back and forth to one another and it is a game that doesn’t even feel real. They even said in the NPR brodcast that most of the money that exists is just the idea of money.

Which then brings me to the Lie That Saved Brazil, and what they had to go through.  Listening to the story was just so awful for the people of Brazil. It’s not understandable why people had to be living the way they did when there was so much money in the world to be shared.  This is because there was apparently no money for the people in Brazil and they were really struggling to get by. Chana Joffe-Walt talked about what the stores were like and how the prices of things would go up or change every single day. How there would be a sticker guy that would go up and down the aisles changing the prices each day, people would even try to get in front of the sticker guy so they could pay the old price. It was devastating when she told us that even when people would get paid, they’d have to spend their money before it wasn’t worth anything anymore. She said you could put your money in a drawer and each day that went by the clock would be ticking on the value of your money. There was even a point when the government threatened to take everyone’s money, people went into panic and some she said even committed suicide. But then one day four men came along to help Brazil’s situation so they wouldn’t have to live like this anymore. Hero’s was what she described them as, they proposed a way to make people think their money had value again. Not long after things started to change because this new idea seemed to make such a difference in the way people just “lied to themselves” so to speak. Even though there was no physical money, all they needed was for people to believe there was and that made all the difference.

This story just easily helps me flow right into Weekend at Bernanke’s, listening to this story just gets me thinking about all the different ways the Federal Reserve could have helped Brazil for example, because in the brodcast they said the Fed can create money at and given time. Why they wouldn’t think to give some to Brazil during that crisis, I don’t exactly know. They were saying that the fed can just make money out of nothing and just lend it out and if they should do this. The process is so easy as they explained, all you do is add a few numbers, click a mouse and alas money is created. Also on top of that they even exclaimed that banks don’t just like to sit on load of money they like to lend it out, so why not use all of this money to help countries in dire need of it? It is interesting to think if the Fed screws up then the people stop believing in the dollar and the dollar loses value as they explained.

Thinking about all these different ways money is transferred and the money people have and how much they have can put them in the category of being wealthy, but why?  Some things these days don’t really have a good representaion of money. What is the point or meaning of money? Money is just something that holds value, but there are so many different things that hold value to different people and if you really think about the dollar and how it is just a piece of paper with a guys face on it, it doesn’t make sense why people go so crazy over it. Money is just another materialistic thing that people think they need to be successful in life when there are far greater things, like knowledge for example. Now a days with how high tech money as gotten it’s just a game of sending numbers and not physical money, so it’s as if the money isn’t even real to begin with.

Works Cited

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

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;.

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

Critical Reading

Section 6

“She mirrors…she just mirrors” her dad’s behavior, Brannan says. She can’t get Katie to stop picking at the sores on her legs, sores she digs into her own skin with anxious little fingers. She is not, according to Brannan, “a normal, carefree six-year-old.”

-it is a interesting thing to see their kids copy their Parents PTSD actions.Especially at such a young age they will pick up anything.

Different studies of the children of American World War II, Korea, and Vietnam vets with PTSD have turned up different results: “45 percent” of kids in one small study “reported significant PTSD signs”

-Kids who parents show up with PTSD 45% of them appear to have the same signs as their parents.

-I believe that kids show more signs than their parents because of their young ages they will pick it up faster and it will be apart of their personalty for a good part of their lives.

But then in 2003, a team of Dutch and Israeli researchers meta-analyzed 31 of the papers on Holocaust survivors’ families, and concluded—to the fury of some clinicians—that when more rigorous controls were applied, there was no evidence for the intergenerational transmission of trauma

-When there is a more controlled environment the chances of trauma is less.

Holocaust survivors “had more resources and networks, wider family members and community to support them to adapt to their new circumstances after a war.” They were not, in other words, expected to man up and get over it. 

– I don’t believe that the reason why the  Holocaust survivors trauma rates were lower because they had more resources to help aid them.

-I think that they had were just in a different environment then the solider coming back from the war.

-An their kids didn’t have any signs because they would just want to forget about their time there. An would just hide there trauma from them.

EO3 Critical Reading – thebeard

Section 17 

 1. Later, she reminds me that Lasagna Night can come apart in an instant, if Caleb has a “bad PTSD moment.”

  • Lasagna Night has probably fallen apart many times before since she says that she is reminded.
  • Caleb probably has PTSD moments a lot that causes problems at home.

2. These are supposed to be her easy months, she sighs, April and May and June, before the anniversaries of his worst firefights—many of them in Ramadi; a lot of bad things happened in Ramadi—exacerbate his flashbacks and nightmares.

  • These months are supposed to be easier, Caleb hasn’t had many PTSD moments in these months in the past from what it seems.
  • Caleb probably wasn’t deployed during these months when he was in war or he wasn’t in the fight.
  • The worst of his firefights must happen in month after June.

3. That’s usually September through January, the “really bad” months, whereas in the spring, she gets a bit of “vacation,” time to clean up the house and catch up on work, rest.

  • From September through January Caleb has a lot of bad PTSD moments.
  • He probably has bad flashbacks of what happened during those months when he was in active duty.
  • In spring Brannan gets time off from the PTSD moments. Caleb may not be home or he is more calm and doesn’t think about them that much then.

4. She used to ask Caleb what was wrong, why he was coiled so tight and poisonous, screaming and yelling at everybody. That just agitated him more.  

  • It is smart not to ask Caleb what was wrong when he was yelling. This made him more angry.

5. Haven’t you noticed I’m having a bad time? he’ll ask. And then she’ll just sit and listen while he says he cannot get it out of his head, about how if he had caught that fucking sniper, that enemy sniper he’d been trying to get, that’d been following them around, terrorizing their unit, if he’d have managed to kill him like he was supposed to, then the sniper wouldn’t have gotten off the shot that killed his buddy.

  • This is something that he has thought about a lot, Caleb lost a friend from this and it haunts him a lot. He always thinks “what if” something else would have happened.

 

Purposeful Summary-ChandlerBing

Is PTSD Contagious?

It seems counterintuitive that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can be seen as contagious. At most, 336,000 Americans have gone to war and came back home showing symptoms of PTSD. These symptoms include reliving the traumatic event, avoiding situations that remind you of that event difficulty controlling emotions and so much more. Spouses of men and women with PTSD claim to be experiencing the symptoms without ever experiencing a traumatic experience. Even their children show behavior problems at school. Studies of the children of World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War veterans with PTSD show that 45 percent of children reported signs of PTSD. Other studies concluded that there is a higher rate for psychiatric treatment. To these studies demise, a team of Dutch and Israeli researchers, in 2005, used meta-analysis to determine that the “spreading” of trauma did not occur within the families of Holocaust survivors.

Prozac: What’s Race Got to Do With It?

It seems counterintuitive that doctors prescribe antidepressants to patients with private health insurance more than minorities, or people using Medicare or Medicaid. Research on medical data of over 125 million patients determined doctors were 60 percent less likely to be prescribed Prozac rather they were prescribed older generations of antidepressants. In 2008, 11 percent of whites and 4 percent of minorities were being treated for depression. Quite frankly, nobody knows why there are these differences when it comes to prescribing antidepressants to patients.

Do Multivitamins Really Work?

It seems counterintuitive to think that multi-vitamins don’t actually help defend your body against illnesses. The supplement industry is worth $28 billion. Nutritionists claim that there is zero evidence to support the fact that multi-vitamins do what they are supposed to do. Most people get all of the supplements they need through their regular diet. In fact, taking multi-vitamins can lead to an excessive consumptions of vitamins which can be dangerous. What’s even more reckless is that the FDA does not regulate the labels of supplements.

E03 Critical Reading – Killroy513

Section 2

Killroy, you were assigned Section 7, several times, aloud, in class, MON SEP 25.

“Now, he’s rounder, heavier, bearded, and long-haired,”

Claim- He different in his original appearance.

-Many Veterans after service do not abide by AR670-1 physical appears codes. They go back to civilian life. A veteran can be anyone around you and you would not even be able to tell.

“obviously tough even if he weren’t prone to wearing a COMBAT INFANTRYMAN cap, but still not the guy you picture when you see his “Disabled Veteran” license plates.

Claim: Caleb is still as strong as he was but has changed.

-Many veterans take pride in serving in the military. Most wear hats displaying their unit, branch or time of service. The hat depicted in the reading is one that displays that the man saw combat as an infantryman. 11B MOS’s are rifleman that are in the heat of combat a good portion of the time. They are the infantry. Many things can be seen serving in the military and they are exposed to most of it. Even though someone isnt physically wounded, the thoughts of what was seen can mentally scare you for the rest of your life. This is basically what PTSD is.

“Not the old ‘Nam guy with a limp, or maybe the young legless Iraq survivor, that you’d expect.”

Claim: Not the typical disabled veteran.

-Many soldiers from the Vietnam war returned disabled, some physically and some mentally. Being in the heat of combat is different for everyone. It effects people in different ways. You could be physically wounded or mentally wounded. These wounds never truly seem to heal because the scares are left as a reminder.

Is PTSD Contagious?

E03 Critical Reading – PlethoraGaming

Section 12

By this point, you might be wondering, and possibly feeling guilty about wondering, why Brannan doesn’t just get divorced. And she would tell you openly that she’s thought about it. “Everyone has thought about it,” she says

  • She is assuming that we all should be thinking that they should be divorced
  • This is a common thought for anyone who has to deal with someone who has PTSD

And a lot of Kateri’s eight-year-old son now counts the exits in new spaces he enters, and points them out to his loved ones until war or fire fails to break out, and everyone is safely back home.

  • Perhaps this is  normal to find a way to get out if someone has a PTSD breakdown.

in the wake of Vietnam, 38 percent of marriages failed within the first six months of a veteran’s return stateside; the divorce rate was twice as high for vets with PTSD as for those without. Vietnam vets with severe PTSD are 69 percent more likely to have their marriages fail than other vets. Army records also show that 65 percent of active-duty suicides, which now outpace combat deaths, are precipitated by broken relationships. And veterans, well, one of them dies by suicide every 80 minutes.

  • Claims: 38 percent of marriages fail within few months of their return
  • Claims: Divorce rate is 2x higher for vets with PTSD.
  • Claims: Broken relationship cause 65% of suicides while active duty
  • Claims: PTSD vets commit suicide every 80 minutes

But even ignoring that though vets make up 7 percent of the United States, they account for 20 percent of its suicides —or that children and teenagers of a parent who’s committed suicide are three times more likely to kill themselves, too—or a whole bunch of equally grim statistics, Brannan’s got her reasons for sticking it out with Caleb.

  • Claims: kids are likely to commit suicide as well if their parents have done so as well.
  • She has her reasons for staying with Caleb

“I love him,” she says.

Brannan fully supports any wife—who feels that she or her children are in danger, or in an untenable mental-health environment, or for whatever reason—who decides to leave. She’s here, through Family of a Vet, to help those people.

  • Claims: She loves him
  • They are not in a dangerous mental zone for the kids to be effected.

But she’s also there for those FOV users who, like her, have decided to stay. “I have enormous respect for Caleb,” she explains if you ask her why. “He has never stopped fighting for this family. Now, we’ve had little breaks from therapy, but he never stopped going to therapy. I love him,” she repeats, defensively at times.

  • Others have stayed with people with PTSD like her
  • She respects and loves Caleb
  • Therapy is helpful and they go to it continuously, even if they take short breaks

He is her friend, and her first love, and her rock, and her lifeline, her blossoming young daughter’s father, her ally, and her hero, she tells Caleb when he asks. Because the person who most often asks Brannan why she stays with her husband is her husband.

  • Caleb is very important to her
  • She stays with him because of who he is

Critical Reading – Jadden14

Section 5

Secondary Traumatic Stress has been documented in the spouses of veterans with PTSD from vietnam. And the spouses of Israeli veterans with PTSD, and Dutch Veterans with PTSD.

  • The author is claiming that Secondary Traumatic Stress has been recorded from previous veterans, by their wives.
  • The author then proceeds to list two more valid points: the spouses of Israeli veterans and the Dutch Veterans also reported this. The tone seems very repetitive, and is said in a way that the author finds this almost not suprising, and uses this to point out the big picture.

In one study, the incidence of secondary trauma in wives of Croatian war vets with PTSD was 30 percent. In another study there, it was 39 percent. “Trauma is really not something that  happens to an individual,” says Robert Motta, a clinical psychologist and psychology professor at Hofstra University who wrote a few of the many medical-journal articles about secondary trauma in Vietnam vets’ families. 

  • The first sentence is backing the theory in the previous sentence. The author presents a statistic to properly support his claim.
  • “In another study there it was 39 percent” – the author presents another study, one with a higher incident rate, to show the importance of this issue.
  • “Trauma is really not something that happens to an individual” – claiming that PTSD not only effects the person with the disorder, but the families as well. This quote is from a well known psychologist professor from a university, a credible source.

“Trauma is a contagious disease; it affects everyone that has close contact with a traumatized person” in some form or another, to varying degrees and for different lengths of time. “Everyone” includes children. Which is something Brannan and Caleb lose not a little sleep over, since they’ve got a six-year-old in the house.

  • “Trauma is a contagious disease; it affects everyone that has close contact with a traumatized person” – continuation of the point made, labeling trauma as a contagious disease, spreading and infecting anyone close to them.
  • “”Everyone” includes children.” – the author is trying to create a form of innocence by adding in the fact that children are being subjected to this issue. This is to bring the audience’s attention to the fact that PTSD is a very serious issue that needs to be addressed.
  • The author then lists an example of a kid who is suffering from this, losing sleep over this disorder. This continues to drive the point that everyone is affected by PTSD.

Katie Vines, the first time I meet her, is in trouble. Not that you’d know it to look at her, bounding up to the car, blondish bob flying as she sprints from her kindergarten class, nice round face like her daddy’s. No one’s the wiser until she cheerfully hands her mother a folder from the backseat she’s hopped into. It contains notes about the day from her teacher.

  • The author introduces a new character, Katie Vines, who apprears to be in trouble.
  • “not that you’d know it to look at her, bounding up to the car, blondish bob flying as she sprints from her kindergarden class” – a vivid description of the scene is provided. Katie seems to be a very hidden character, who resembles her father.
  • The mother recieves her progress in the form of notes from the teacher.

“It says here,” Brannan says, her eyes narrowing incredulously, “that you spit on somebody today.”

“Yes ma’am,” Katie admits, lowering her voice and her eyes guiltily.

“Katie Vines.” Brannan was born here in Alabama, so that’s drawled. “Wah did you do that?”

  • Katie now comes off as mean after reading the first line of dialog, as she spit on someone in school.
  • She lowers her eyes as she responds, she knows it was wrong, and admits to doing the act. If she knew it was wrong, then why did she do it?
  • The response from the mother, she is stunned. The author notes she was born in Alabama, and uses a southern accent in the mother’s response.

Her schoolmate said something mean. Maybe. Katie doesn’t sound sure, or like she remembers exactly. One thing she’s positive of: “She just made me…so. MAD.” Brannan asks Katie to name some of the alternatives. “Walk away, get the teacher, yes ma’am, no ma’am,” Katie dutifully responds to the prompts. She looks disappointed in herself. Her eyebrows are heavily creased when she shakes her head and says quietly again, “I was so mad.”

  • The audience finds out that one of katie’s schoolmates said something mean to her. But there is a certain disbelief from the author.
  • The mother then presents how the daughter should have appropriately handled the situation. The daughter shows signs of dissapointment, the mother is furious.
  • The author describes with great detail the anger within the mother.