Songs of My Life.

"All I Do is Win" by DJ Khaled. This song reminds me of some of my favorites memories during high school on my lacrosse team. I loved playing the sport for 5 years and the girls on the team became like my family. We would always play this song before all of our games to pump up and on the bus home as well. I miss my team like crazy and this song reminds me of them.

"Young, Wild & Free" by Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa. This song reminds me that I am still young and should have fun and experience things while I can.

"Butterfly Kisses" by Bob Carlisle. My dad has always been one of the most important people in my life and this song reminds me of him. He always used to put me to bed at night when I was little and play this song while I fell asleep. He would give me "butterfly" kisses and tuck me in.

"One Day" by Matisyahu. I used this song for a project in high school and I fell in love with it. It makes me sad but it makes me realize how lucky I am. I have had so many opportunities in my life and I need to take advantage of them and never take my life for granted.

"Waka Waka" by Shakira. I love this song because it reminds me of all of my amazing friends and how much fun we has last summer. This song has a very fun melody and beat, we would always listen to it whenever we were together. We had a blast laughing and trying to dance like how she does in the music video and trying to learn the words that were in a different language.

Research Practice

"While it is true that the United States is not The Netherlands, the example of the Dutch system provides at least an indication that marijuana legalization would not be the disaster that opponents say it would be" (Inciardi, 1991).


Inciardi, J. (1991). The drug legalization debate. Sage Publications. 


This source contains a lot of information about they effects that legalizing marijuana would have on our country. I like how the source addresses many different issues such a crime, tax revenue, and the impact on our society. It also provides information about what the opposing view may think and why it is wrong. I believe that I could use this part of the source to show the the effects of legalizing marijuana would not be as dramatic as everyone thinks. The source talks about how the Netherlands is much more accepting of cannabis use, and how their user rates are actually much lower than the United States. The author believes that legalizing marijuana would have positive effects, and that if we don't we will be stuck at a dead end with this issue. 







"Second, marijuana use has great costs and consequences to all of us in society -- not just to users. Young marijuana users are more likely than nonusers to use other illicit drugs, to have automobile crashes, and to be arrested" (Shalala, 1995).


Shalala, D. (1995, August 18). Say 'no' to legalization of marijuana. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from    
     http://www.michelepolak.com/200fall11/Weekly_Schedule_files/Shalala,_1.pdf
 

This article was on pro quest and was published in the wall street journal, so that leads me to believe that it is fairly credible. I believe that this source could be used a a counter argument against the previous source that I found. It talks about the negative effects the marijuana has on young users. They said that if marijuana was legalized, more young people would use it, and it would have very negative effects on their lives. The article also talks about how we would loose money in the long run if it was legalized because there would be more hospital visits, crashes, and arrests. I think there is also a lot of information in this source that I could easily refute because it has been shown that marijuana is not actually much of a "gate-way" drug, which has been a very common myth.

End of the Book!!!!

Chapter 10 explains how sometimes using the DSM can be dangerous because it is often overused and people can be misdiagnosed. Psychologists would get together and just yell out new disorders and they would get written down in the book. He talks about a case where some psychologists faked hearing a voice in their head that said the words "empty" hollow" and "thud." They otherwise acted completely but most were not let out for several weeks. This shows the implications of labeling someone as mentally ill. When the DSM-III was released more copies were sold to the general public than to professionals. This lead to many people self diagnosing themselves, which benefited the drug companies. He also talks about the over diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children. The medicine that is given to children to treat this disorder can have a large affect on their life and personality, as is the case with Matt and Rebecca.

I enjoyed reading this book because it was really interesting and it really made you think deeply about our society and the world that we live in. I really do think that most of psychiatry and psychology is guesswork. We try so hard to understand the human mind and how it works but truly we will never be able to know what anyone else's "beetle" looks like. I also realized how strong the implications of putting a label on someone can be. The psychologists that pretended to hear voices but then acted normal were not let out for several weeks. Putting a label on someone can greatly affect theirs lives and is something that they may not be able to get ride of. Having the DSM available could be dangerous because people could over diagnose themselves or others. I liked how the end of the story tied up the loose ends about Tony, but I am honestly still confused about who is actually a psychopath or not in the story. I guess that is the point, that we will never truly know.

"Aiming A Bit High"

In the beginning of this chapter, Ronson once again meets up with Bob Hare. Right away Bob accuses the concierge of being a psychopath after he "manhandles" and yells at Ronson for trying to use the telephone. The sit down and drink at the hotel bar and Bob tells Ronson about how there are certain experts, psychologists, and profilers traveling the world with little more than a Certificate of Attendance who might have a lot more influence on things like parole hearings and serial-killer incident rooms than they should. After that conversation Ronson seeks out Paul Britton. Britton was a criminal profiler who became famous after he correctly profiled the murderer of a young women. Britton did help to solve many cases but he wasn't always right. The times when he was wrong were just brushed under the rug and ignored. His career fell apart when it came to the murder of Rachel Nickell. He strongly believed that the murderer was a man named Colin Stagg, who turned out to be falsely accused. The police tried to force a confession out of him by using a woman named Lizzie. While the police were preoccupied with Stagg, the real murderer, Robert Napper, killed a woman and her daughter.

I actually enjoyed reading these two chapters a lot. The stories in both were very interesting and they captured my attention. I found these chapters to be different than most of the others so far in the book because they didn't necessarily have to do with the story of a particular psychopath. I thought that the story of Rachel North was extremely sad. This woman had to go through such a traumatic experience, and then had to deal with being accused of being fake and of being part of a conspiracy theory. I was a bit confused whether Ronson was trying to say that Shayler was a psychopath or not. Chapter 9 was also a bit depressing because this poor man was falsely accused of murder. I thought it was really wrong how the police tried to force a confession out of him by using that women. That doesn't seem right to me.

"Something Borrowed"

In the essay "Something Borrowed" by Malcolm Gladwell he looks into plagiarism and explains that plagiarism is when you steal ideas and words from other people, but that the more important thing is how much of their work you copied and why you copied it. He starts off by describing the story of Dorothy Lewis who felt like she had been robbed. She accused the writer of "Frozen" of plagiarizing many words and ideas from her book and her life. He learned that the writer of the play claims that she wrote the play incorporating ideas from many different sources, including the news, and did not realize that what she was doing was wrong. He also talks about how there is a fine line for plagiarism when it comes to music. Gladwell gives examples of many songs which have the same hook or series of notes. It is hard to say that one person owns the right to a series of notes or a certain sound. Plagiarism is such a hard thing to define and punish people for because there are so many people on this earth that it is hard to say that one person owns the right to a set or words or ideas. It is hard to know who actually thought of the idea first and who it belongs to.

I enjoyed reading this article because it gave me a lot of insight into just how complicated the whole topic of plagiarism can be. I used to think that plagiarism was simple and easy to define and punish but after reading this I realized that sometimes that line can be much more difficult to distinguish. I thought that the examples about the songs were particularly interesting. I agree with Gladwell in that plagiarism can be taken as a compliment but that it does get annoying. If people copy your work, it shows that you did something right and that other people enjoy what you have done. But at the same time, people shouldn't be able to act like something is theirs when another person worked so hard to create it. I got confused at times because I wasn't sure who he was talking about or who was copy who.

Night of the Living Dead

In chapter 6, Ronson travels to Shubuta, Mississippi, which used to be a thriving town but is now quite dead. Shubuta was home to a Sunbeam plant that made toasters, but Ronson learned that this company had many terrible CEOs. He was told that the company was run by madman after madman and the last CEO was Al Dunlap, who shut the plant down. Ronson wanted to learn more about Dunlap, and whether he really was a psychopath, so he met up with him at his lavish Florida mansion. When he gets to the house he discovers that it is filled with sculptures that are predators including lions, panthers, eagles, and hawks. During his visit Ronson is trying to discover whether Dunlap fits the characteristics that are listed on Hare's checklist. He finds that Dunlap fits many of these traits but is mainly missing the ones involving promiscuous sexual behavior. Dunlap denies that there is anything wrong with these traits and in fact calls them "Leadership Positives." Ronson briefs Hare on the visit with Dunlap, and Hare helps Ronson clear up a few points. He says at the end of the chapter that journalists love writing about eccentrics, so to get away with true, malevolent power, be boring.


I thought that chapter 6 was really interesting because it brought back the subject of psychopaths being in high positions such as a CEO. Dunlap seemed like a very weird and harsh guy. I agreed with Ronson, in that I think he is a psychopath. He was so mean and manipulative with the company and his employees, without feeling any remorse. Its scary to know that people like Dunlap are may be running huge companies and hold very high positions in our country. I also thought that chapter 7 was very intriguing. I thought it was really sad how they take advantage of people just so that they can be good entertainment on reality TV. I felt really bad for Deleese, the women who heard about how ugly her family thought she was but then ended up not getting her makeover.

Research Question

Why doesn't the U.S  have universal health care and how has going without it affected our country and the people who live in it?


The reason why I choose this topic is because I am genuinely interested in the topic and finding out the answer. I want to go into the nursing field, so health care is something that I should probably learn about and find more about. We have discussed universal health care in this class and also in my Nursing 105 course, so I have already had some exposure to the topic. Also, since this topic is such a big deal and hot issue in our society right now I feel like it would be fairly easy to find information about. If I did research on this topic I know that I would be able to find a ton of information both for and against universal health care. I would probably want to do research on other countries that do have universal health care and compare it to our own. I would want to find out if others countries with a system unlike ours are getting better results with their health care system than we are.

I think that the question of how it has affected our country might be fairly hard to answer. It might be hard to answer because everyone has such different opinions about universal health care. Some would say it has improve our society but others would say it has been very detrimental. Although, I do think that most sources of this topic would agree that our country does need some type of reform.

The Psychopath Test

Ronson emails Rob Hare to ask if they could meet up so that he could learn more about his checklist. Ronson ends up going to a residential course taught by Rob that explained all about the checklist that he had invented. Through his own research, Rob had discovered that the brains of psychopaths were different. As the days pass Ronson becomes less skeptical of the checklist and becomes a Rob Hare devotee. Ronson discovers that many psychologists believe that there are a disproportionate number of psychopaths found in high places. He is told that he needs to be careful in his search and study of psychopaths because they can come in all shapes and sizes and be extremely dangerous.

I thought that this chapter was really interesting because it gave insight into research that had been done on psychopaths at the time. I didn't exactly understand why that when Rob presented his research, no one believed him. He should have gotten greater respect and praise for his research. I also enjoyed reading chapter 5 but I found it a little disturbing. I couldn't believe that our country would let a man who had done such horrible things live here without any consequences for his actions. I still wonder whether Toto is actually a psychopath or not.

"Psychopaths Dream in Black and White"

In Chapter 3, Jon Ronson talks about a psychiatrist named Elliot Barker, who discovered something called nude psychotherapy sessions while on a year-long odyssey. He also visited a therapeutic community for schizophrenics called Kingsley Hall. When Elliot returned to Ontario he got a job at Oak Ridge hospital for the criminally insane and started the first ever marathon nude psychotherapy session for criminal psychopaths. The sessions were sometimes up to 11 days long and consisted of no distractions. After these sessions many of the patients were said to be cured and were released from Oak Ridge.  But it turned out that 80 percent of the psychopaths involved in the program went on to re-offend, so the capsule actually made the psychopaths worse.

I found this chapter of the book to be very interesting and disturbing at the same time. The idea of making psychopaths strip down to nothing and sit and have a therapy season together seemed really odd.  I also found it strange that after these LSD-fueled sessions, many of the patients were said to have been cured but I wasn’t really sure how that could be possible. Making psychopaths sit naked with other psychopaths doesn’t sound like a great treatment plan to me. I also found the accounts of Kingsley Hall to be very interesting. Although all of the patients had schizophrenia, they acted so differently and had such unique behaviors. 

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